Diaspora Bonds - NYU Law Review

Transcription

ARTICLES
DIASPORA BONDS
ANuimM CHANDER*
Diasporas-groupswho maintain ties to a homeland while living abroad-present
a challengeto standardparadigmsof internationallaw. The dominzant statistmodel
of internationallav, which limits tie read of a state's laws to its own geographic
boundaries, allows no legal connection between a diasporaand its homeland. The
cosmopolitan model of internationallaw, wich minimizes the importance of nationality, also discouragessuch legal ties. ProfessorAnupam Chanderproposes a
third paradigm-the diasporan model-which accommodates the dual loyalties
and interests of people living in diasporasby allowing them to be governed by the
laws of both their homelands and their adopted countries. As an example of host
the diasporanmodel might settle concrete legal problems, ChanderdiscussesResurgent India Bonds, a medzanisin that the Indian government uses to raise capital
from the Indian diaspora. He suggests a diasporansohtion to the choice-of-law
question raised by foreign-issued securities: enforcing forum-sekction clauses
which keep private litigants out of U.S. courts, while allowing regulatorsto enforce
U.S. law againstforeign issuers. This hybrid solution, Chander argues, makes a
diasporan compromise: It respects the sovereignty of the adopted country over
matters of public concern while allowing the diaspora to choose the law of its
homeland to resolve private disputes.
* Acting Professor of Law, University of California at Davis, School of Law.
[email protected]. A.B., 1989, Harvard College; J.D., 1992, Yale Law School. I thank
Diane Amann, Sandy Askland, Minal Shah Fenton, Tom Heller, Kevin Johnson, Owen
Jones, Dennis Karjala, Anne Marie Slaughter, and Michael Trebilcock for insightful comments on a draft, and Kwaku Andoh, Nathalie Augustin, Jack Ayer, Harish Chander,
David Chung, Sima Gottesfeld, Bob Hillman, Bill Ong Hing, Ed Imwinkelried, Tom Joo,
Fritz Juenger, Shane Kadidal, Jerry Kang, Gary Marchant, Spencer Overton, Jon Rose,
Bruce Rosenstock, and Tim W"ilkins for enlightening conversations on the subject. An
early version of the case study that appears herein was presented at faculty colloquia at the
law schools of American University, Arizona State University, Duke University, Hofstra
University, Rutgers University at Camden, University of California at Davis, University of
Michigan, University of San Diego, University of Texas, and Wayne State University. I
presented the theoretical framework of diaspora at the Joint Conference of the Asian Pacific American Lav Teachers and the Western Regional Law Teachers of Color in Haai'i,
the Law, Culture, and Humanities conference at the University of Texas at Austin, and the
Asian Pacific American Cultural Politics Research Group at the University of California at
Davis. I learned much from all of these discussions. Thanks also to John Browder, Megan
Gallagher, Guru Inder Khalsa, and Kelly Spencer for helpful research assistance. I am
especially indebted to my mentors Akhil Amar, Lee Buchheit, NV. Michael Reisman, and
Jed Rubenfeld for encouraging me to undertake this study. My greatest debt is to Madhavi
Sunder for her insight and love. Of course, none of these generous individuals should be
implicated with any wrongheadedness in this work. I am grateful to the University of California at Davis and Arizona State University for grants supporting my research. This Paper was selected for presentation at the Stanford Yale Junior Faculty Forum, held at
Stanford Law School in June 2001. It also received an Honorable Mention in the 2001
Scholarly Paper competition of the American Association of Law Schools.
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Imaged with the Permission of N.Y.U. Law Review
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW
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INTRODUCTION
A Chinese American wakes up and logs on to China.com where
she catches up on the previous day's events in China and in ethnic
Chinese communities around the world.' A sari-clad woman on Long
Island purchases Resurgent India Bonds over the phone, putting her
savings into the service of her homeland.2 A Jewish American boards
a subsidized flight, joining other Jewish Americans flying to Israel to
vote in a crucial election. 3 Taking office as President of Ireland, Mary
Robinson declares her intention to represent not just the 3.5 million
people residing in the Republic, but also the other seventy million
worldwide who claim Irish descent. 4 An Albanian American in Yonkers prepares to go fight in the Kosovo Liberation Army.5
While diasporas are as old as history, diasporas at the turn of the
millennium maintain bonds to their homelands and among their members that are stronger than ever. Today, the diaspora-people dispersed from their homelands, yet maintaining ties to those homelands
and to each other-votes, invests capital, participates in political life,
and even takes up arms, all for a distant homeland. These expressions
are markers of citizenship and nation, not only private association and
culture. Because they maintain important relationships that defy national borders, diasporas today do not fit easily into the simple Cartesian geography of the nation-state system, which conceives of political
communities expressed only within a nation-state, not across nationstates.6 Empowered by communication and transportation revolu1 This image refers to the Internet portal of China.com, which, as a U.S.-listed, publicly traded corporation owned in part by AOL and the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua,
is itself very much diasporan. http://corp.china.com/shareholders.htm (last visited Apr. 12,
2001).
2 An advertisement for Resurgent India Bonds depicts an image of a woman in a sari
advising: "You don't need to be a financial wizard. You need to be Indian." Somini
Sengupta, India Taps Into Its Diaspora: Investing for Love of Country, and 7.75% Interest, N.Y. Times, Aug. 19, 1998, at Bi ("[T]he Government is hoping to cash in on the
patriotic fervor among its departed native sons and daughters.").
3 Jackie Rothenberg, Vote May Turn on a Wing & a Low Fare, N.Y. Post, May 16,
1999, at 7 (noting that "Israelis leaving from New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, along
with others departing from Europe, could make a difference" in Israeli national election).
4 Rob Brown, Putting the Sporran Into Diaspora, Sunday Herald (Glasgow), Jan. 23,
2000, at 8, LEXIS, News Library.
5 Barbara Stewart, Signing Up in Yonkers to Fight for Kosovo, N.Y. Times, Apr. 12,
1999, at Al.
6 As Thomas Franck describes:
Since the Reformation, the Peace of Westphalia and the writings of Hugo
Grotius, the state has been the alpha and omega of personal identity. One is
Canadian or American or Rwandan or Indonesian. All persons and corporate
entities have a nationality, which describes their singular and total identity as
recognized by the international legal and political system.
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DIASPORA BONDS
1007
tions that help bind far-flung people, diasporas now fundamentally
challenge the international legal system.
The traditional response to this challenge would be to insist upon
the clean demarcations of the nation-state. For "statists," the nationstate defines the borders of the political community to which one can
legitimately belong.7 Statists would presume diaspora relations to be
the stuff of private contacts, of sentiment that should diminish over
time. To leave one's homeland is, under the theory embedded in the
traditional international system, to reject any political connection with
that homeland and to tie one's fortunes and loyalties entirely to one's
adopted land.
The statists, however, face their own critics in the form of internationalists who deny the moral salience of the state. These modem
"cosmopolitans," led by renowned scholars such as Brian Barry,
Charles Beitz, Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Pogge, and Jeremy
Waldron, believe that an individual's primary commitment should be
to humankind rather than to her compatriots or national flag.8
Globalization, the cosmopolitans believe, should lead to a global citizenry. Like statists, however, cosmopolitans too would be hostile to
the diaspora, rejecting the diaspora's patriotism either to its original
or adopted patria. For the cosmopolitans, the diaspora is doubly misguided because of its potential commitment to not just one, but two
states.9
This Article proposes a third paradigm for conceiving of the citizen and her relationship to a country. Rejecting both the statist and
cosmopolitan worldviews as faulty accounts of who we are now, this
Article offers a "diaspora model" of citizenship and the nation-state.
A globalized world requires a new paradigm of the relationship of the
citizen to the state. In place of the statist insistence on a singular state
loyalty or the cosmopolitan call for global citizenship, the diaspora
model would permit individuals to construct national and transnational communities of their own choosing. According to the diaspora
model, one's loyalty can be to the country in which one lives, the
country or countries from which one's ancestors came, the diaspora to
Thomas M. Franck, Clan and Superclan: Loyalty, Identity and Community in Law and
Practice, 90 Am. J. Int'l L. 359, 360 (1996); cf. James Clifford, Diasporas, 9 Cultural Anthropology 302, 307 (1994) ("Diasporas are caught up with and defined against... the
norms of nation-states ....).
7 See infra notes 122-27 and accompanying text.
9 For ease of exposition, this Article speaks of the potential commitments of a
diasporan individual as being to her homeland and her hostland. However, a diasporan
individual may have more than two potential states to which she feels a commitment, perhaps because she has lived, for example, in India, Kenya, and then the United States.
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which one belongs, or all or none of the above. This diaspora model
finds in the hybridity and dual loyalty of diaspora the basis for reconceiving the citizen as able to live and thrive with multiple and overlapping loyalties and sovereigns. This Article begins to explore the
important legal implications of this model of the relationship of citizen
to state.
The legal literature treats diaspora as a historical or perhaps a
cultural phenomenon,' 0 but ignores its political and legal relevance."1
The law is still focused on the traditional constructs of "immigrant"
and "minority," not recognizing the fundamental change occurring in
people's understanding of themselves and their relationship to the nation-state.' 2 Little attention is paid to the transnational ties of diasporas, especially their concern for their homeland. 13 In fact, the
concepts of the homeland and the transnational community built by a
diaspora, so dear to many people's lives and so important to interna10 While agreeing that diasporas are crucial to understanding our time, many may question their relevance to legal and political structures. They will say that diasporas are properly the subject of cultural or economic inquiry. This relegation of diaspora to the realm of
the private denies the aphorism that the "personal is the political." See Catharine A.
MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State 95 (1989) (describing consequences of
consciousness-raising about individual experience for normative questions about public institutions and observing that "split between public and private," in the context of relations
between the sexes, "functioned ideologically to keep each woman feeling alone"). Indeed,
the cultural and economic aspects of diaspora help determine its political and legal relations. Furthermore, people living in diaspora today undertake activities that are explicitly
political and legal. Whether private or public, the diaspora's maintenance of a sort of
transnation-a nation crossing state borders-affects the basic conceptions of the international system and the citizen's relationship to the state. None of this denies that many of
the major tectonic shifts introduced by diasporas may be in the cultural and economic
landscapes.
11 Three exceptions should be noted. See Madhavi Sunder, Intellectual Properly and
Identity Politics: Playing With Fire, 4 J. Gender Race & Just. 69, 90-98 (2000) (cautioning
that legal efforts to regulate media premised upon notions of "authenticity" and "preservation" are undermined by diaspora); Peter J. Spiro, The Citizenship Dilemma, 51 Stan. L.
Rev. 597, 621-25 (1999) (book review) (recognizing nonstate communities such as diasporas and the possibility that "individuals may find that they cannot be fully happy unless
they are part of communities that are supportive of their identities and interests as they
understand them" (internal quotation marks omitted)); Jonathan Boyarin, Note, Circumscribing Constitutional Identities in Kiryas Joel, 106 Yale L.J. 1537, 1547 (1997) (arguing
for recognition of identity as organized around diaspora and genealogy).
12 Even important recent immigration law scholarship focusing on understanding citizenship at the turn of the century overlooks diasporas. See, e.g., Linda Bosniak, Citizenship Denationalized, 7 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 447, 452 (2000) (examining efforts to
locate citizenship "beyond the nation-state").
13 The traditional focus on "immigrants" draws attention to the relationship between
the individual and the place to which she migrates, potentially obscuring the relationship
between the person and the place she left behind, as well as the importance to her new
country of that continuing relationship.
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DIASPORA BONDS
tional economics and politics, make only a rare appearance in legal
scholarship.
Where law has faltered, the humanities have forged ahead. The
humanities have adopted diaspora as a central focus of inquiry in understanding our time. Humanities scholars have found in diaspora
"the exemplary communities of the transnational moment,"' 14 and the
"exemplary condition of late modernity."'' s Humanities and social science scholars have begun to study the impact of diasporas on fundamental legal concepts such as immigrant, citizen, and nation. 16 A
journal dedicated to the study of diaspora, entitled Diaspora: A Journal of TransnationalStudies, has been established. 17 Diaspora provided the theme of the 1999 Annual Meeting of the American
Historical Association, 18 and the year 2000 saw numerous international conferences devoted to the subject. 19
Even while the law has ignored diaspora qua diaspora, legal
scholarship has begun to respond to some of its salient characteristics.
Multiculturalism takes as its mandate the need to respond to and accept the heterogeneous population of the late-modern nation-statein direct repudiation of the assimilationist ideal. Drawing on the in14 Khachig T61olyan, The Nation-State and Its Others: In Lieu of a Preface, 1 Diaspora
3, 5 (1991) (describing Diasporajournal as seeking to trace struggles over homeland and
nation).
15 Vijay Mishra, The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian Diaspora, 10 Textual
Prac. 421, 426 (1996) (recognizing modem view of diasporas that questions whether -a
people" must have "a land").
16 Consider, for example, the anthropologist Stanley Tambiah: "[Transnational] flos
of people, capital, and information" combine to "test and breach the autonomy, sovereignty, and territorial boundaries of extant nation-states hitherto considered as the primary
units of collective sociopolitical identity and existence." Stanley J. Tambiah, Transnational
Movements, Diaspora, and Multiple Modernities, Daedalus, Winter 2000, at 163, 164. See
generally Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (1999)
(examining possibility of revising concept of citizenship based on transnational experiences
of Chinese people).
17 Scholarship on diasporas abounds in other social science and humanities journals as
well. See, e.g., V.Y. Mudimbe & Sabine Engel, Introduction, 98 S. Atlantic Q. 1 (1999)
(introducing symposium on "Diasporas and Immigration").
18 See Robert Townsend, 1999 Annual Meeting Highlights, http'/-;rv.theaha.orglfperspectiveslissues/l9999903/9903ANN2.CFM (describing Annual Meeting's general theme
of "Diasporas and Migrations in History").
19 The Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Hamburg held a conference in February 2000 on "Locality, Identity, Diaspora." See httpd/wwwv.rrz.unihamburg.deldiasporathome.htm. The European Research Forum on Migration, Ethnic
Relations, Refugee Protection and Minority Politics (EUROFOR) sponsored a conference
on "Immigrant Communities, Diasporas, and Politics" in Athens in May 2000. See http://
userpage.fu-berlin.del-migratioleurofor/e3labs.htm (providing abstracts of papers
presented at conference). The Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict Research Group at the
University of Western Ontario held a conference on "Diasporas and Transnational Identities" in October 2000 in Ontario. See http'//vww.ssc.uo.cafpolscifnecrgfdiasporal
about.html.
[Vol. 76:1005
sights of multiculturalism, LatCrit 20 scholars have illuminated the
struggles of people who live, either literally or figuratively, in the borderlands between two societies. 21 Immigration scholars have discussed the rise of dual nationality and recognized the dual loyalties of
people who maintain ties to different states.22 Recent scholarship,
often written from law and economics and law and society perspectives, has described the private orderings that ethnic groups some23
times use, enforcing norms other than those of the dominant polity.
20 "LatCrit" refers to "a group of progressive law professors engaged in theorizing
about the ways in which the Law and its structures, processes and discourses affect people
of color, especially the Latina/o communities." Kevin R. Johnson, Celebrating LatCrit
Theory: What Do We Do When the Music Stops?, 33 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 753, 754-55
(2000) (citing Fact Sheet: LatCrit, in LatCrit Primer (1999) (unpublished materials distributed to participants at LatCrit IV Conference)). See also Francisco Valdes, Under Construction: LatCrit Consciousness, Community and Theory, 85 Cal. L. Rev. 1087, 1089 n.2
(1997) ("LatCrit theory is the emerging field of legal scholarship that examines critically
the social and legal positioning of Latinas/os, especially Latinas/os within the United
States, to help rectify the shortcomings of existing social and legal conditions.").
21 See, e.g., Kevin R. Johnson, How Did You Get to Be Mexican? 6-9 (1999) (describing efforts of mixed Latino/Anglo scholar to fit into fixed racial categories of American
society); Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis 208 (1989)
("[Blorderlands should be regarded not as analytically empty transitional zones but as sites
of creative cultural production that require investigation."); Leslie Espinoza & Angela P.
Harris, Embracing the Tar-Baby: LatCrit Theory and the Sticky Mess of Race, 85 Cal. L.
Rev. 1585, 1612-19 (1997) (describing literal and figurative borders between states, races,
and publicdprivate life); Enid Trucios-Haynes, LatCrit Theory and International Civil and
Political Rights: The Role of the Transnational Identity and Migration, 28 U. Miami InterAm. L. Rev. 293, 298-302 (1997) (envisioning demise of nation-state and recognition of
transnational identity); Valdes, supra note 20, at 1122 ("[Latina/o] communities and identities within the United States are constructed on pillars that straddle nations and borders.").
James Clifford observes that border theories "share a good deal with diaspora paradigms."
Clifford, supra note 6, at 304. He distinguishes the two as follows: "Diasporas usually
presuppose longer distances and a separation more like exile: a constitutive taboo on return, or its postponement to a remote future. Diasporas also connect multiple communities of a dispersed population." Id.
22 See, e.g., Peter H. Schuck, Citizens, Strangers and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship 238-39, 245 (1998) (noting anxiety "that allegiance of dual citizens to
America is wanting-at best divided and at worst subordinate to their earlier allegiance"
and suggesting that naturalization oath be "revised to require person to pledge primary
loyalty to the United States"); Peter J. Spiro, Dual Nationality and the Meaning of Citizenship, 46 Emory L.J. 1411, 1416 (1997) ("In a world of liberal states.., the necessity of
exclusive allegiances has largely dissipated .... " (citation omitted)).
23 See, e.g., Lisa Bernstein, Opting Out of the Legal System: Extralegal Contractual
Relations in the Diamond Industry, 21 J. Legal Stud. 115, 138-41 (1992) (describing development of private law system among historically ethnically homogenous diamond
merchants); Lan Cao, Looking at Communities and Markets, 74 Notre Dame L. Rev. 841,
848 (1999) (observing efforts by various immigrant groups to establish community-based
savings and credit associations outside conventional banking system); Walter Otto
Weyrauch & Maureen Anne Bell, Autonomous Lawmaking: The Case of the "Gypsies,"
103 Yale L.J. 323 (1993) (studying autonomous laws and legal processes among transnational communities of Romani people). The literature on norm theory is burgeoning. See
Eric A. Posner, Law and Social Norms 5 (2000) (developing general model of nonlegal
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DIASPORA BONDS
Law and development theorists have explored the interplay between
markets, democracy, and ethnicity.24 Postcolonial theorists have uncovered the hidden relationship between the history of colonialism
and the status of immigrants today.25 Yet none of these approaches
have dealt directly with the challenge that diasporas pose to the traditional conception of the international system.
Diasporas at the turn of the millennium share three new features
that make them a more potent political and economic phenomenon
than they have been in the past, making them, in turn, a phenomenon
that demands new consideration in law. First, diasporas have become
increasingly economically empowered, principally because their greatest numbers tend to be in prosperous, industrialized states. 2 6 Moreover, hostility toward them in these lands has declined. Second,
revolutions in transportation and communications technologies, especially the Internet, permit diasporas to participate actively in their
homelands' affairs and to maintain a virtual community across borders
to a more significant degree than was possible at any earlier time.r 7
Third, perhaps because of a deepening sense of an individual right to
define one's identity, 8 diasporas now are more likely to assert their
right to maintain ties to their homelands and to each other. The increased economic and political ties afforded by these developments
inevitably will lead to legal conflicts, especially those involving choice
of law and concurrent efforts by nations to exercise prescriptive
jurisdiction.
cooperation). A seminal work on norms is Robert C. Ellickson, Order Without Law
(1991). Perhaps the most important contribution to the theory of private ordering has
been made by the economist Friedrich Hayek. See, e.g., 2 F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation
and Liberty 107-32 (1976) (describing spontaneous order generated by market).
24 See, e.g., Amy L. Chua, Markets, Democracy, and Ethnicity- Toward a New Paradigm for Law and Development, 108 Yale LJ.1 (1998) (observing perils of combined pursuit of marketization and democratization given presence of economically dominant
minority ethnic group).
25 See, e.g., Tayyab Mahmud, Migration, Identity, and the Colonial Encounter, 76 Or.
L. Rev. 633,634 (1997) ("[R]elationships of empire and imperialism between 'the West and
the Rest' are central to the inter/national imagining and construction of the immigrant
..... "(citation omitted)).
26 The majority of international migrants now go to just four wealthy countries: the
United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia, in that order. World Bank, Entering the
21st Century- World Development Report 1999/2000, at 37-38 (2000).
27 See infra note 94.
28 See, e.g., Thomas M. Franck, The Empowered Self 2 (1999) ("[T]he law-national
and international-is moving to accommodate this new interest of persons in taking charge
of determining who they are."); Franck, supra note 6, at 359 ("What is new is a growving
consciousness of a personal right to compose one's identity."); Charles Taylor, The Politics
of Recognition, in Multiculturalism 25,28 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1994) (describing "new understanding of individual identity" based in ideal of authenticity that emerged at end of
eighteenth century).
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Whereas at one time diaspora relations with the homeland
tended to be disorganized and private, increasingly those relationships
are well organized and public. We see this especially in the role diasporas play in the globalization of capital. 29 Because of its members'
expertise and ties to the homeland and because of their knowledge of
Western corporations, the diaspora serves as the vanguard of multinational corporations that invest in developing and transition economies.30 Traditionally, diasporas also contributed capital directly
through private mechanisms-sending remittances to loved ones left
behind,31 offering charity, and investing directly in companies. 32 Now,
however, homeland governments are making official efforts to spur
homeward investment from their diasporas with appeals founded on
the patriotism of the diaspora. 33 For example, Scotland has set up a
Scottish North American Business Council to take advantage of "the
warm emotional ties between .. .North American Scots and their
29 In a recent report on the state of world development, the World Bank points to the
important role diasporas play in facilitating the dissemination of information and capital:
"Diasporas serve as channels for the flow of information, market intelligence, capital, and
skills." World Bank, supra note 26, at 39. They also "may supplement formal channels
that rely on market institutions," which in turn provides a way for migrants to conduct
transactions in an atmosphere of trust, and offsets information asymmetries and other market failures. Id. Finally, modem diasporas, like their Mediterranean predecessors, see infra notes 75, 76 and accompanying text, expedite business transactions by resolving
monitoring problems, reducing opportunism, and building reputations and ethnic trust
based on networking. Id.
30 Diasporas have long played a central role in international commerce. John
Armstrong notes, for example, that "Spanish Jews were indispensable for international
commerce in the Middle Ages and Armenians controlled the overland trade between Europe and the Orient as late as the nineteenth century." John A. Armstrong, Mobilized and
Proletarian Diasporas, 70 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 393, 396 (1976). Armstrong also observes that
diasporas historically have been "directly involved in transmitting innovative economic
techniques-e.g., Saxon miners in Eastern Europe and Chinese exploitation of gold and tin
mines in Borneo and Malaya." Id. at 397.
31 Sharon Stanton Russell, Migrant Remittances and Development, 30 Int'l Migration
267, 267-75 (1992) (discussing impact of remittances on migration and development and
noting increase in remittances between 1980 and 1990).
32 Commentators have, for example, discussed the importance of direct investment by
overseas Chinese to the furious pace of economic development in the People's Republic of
China. See Paul J. Bolt, Looking to the Diaspora: The Overseas Chinese and China's
Economic Development, 1978-1994, 5 Diaspora 467, 468 (1996) (describing China as "a
state that has deliberately instituted policies to attract the resources of its diaspora"); see
also The Overseas Chinese: A Driving Force, Economist, July 18, 1992, at 21, 24 (observing that overseas Chinese populations are largest source of direct foreign investment in
China).
33 The World Bank observes that "[g]overnments in South Asia, Central and South
America, and Sub-Saharan Africa have made limited efforts to exploit the potential of
overseas networks to further development." World Bank, supra note 26, at 39-40. It continues: "In the next few decades.... countries with large and growing emigrant communities scattered throughout the world will have the opportunity to tap into the development
potential of their diasporas." Id. at 40.
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ancestral home." 34 Most notably, instead of borrowing money in the
international capital markets or from foreign governments or multilateral financial institutions, some homeland governments have begun to
turn to their diasporas for funding.3 5
The "Diaspora Bonds" of this Article's title carry both figurative
and literal meanings, describing the sentimental attachments of the
diaspora to its homeland, as well as the debt instruments offered by a
homeland government to raise capital principally from its diaspora.
Diaspora Bonds, in the latter sense, have a rich history, going back at
least as far as the bonds offered overseas by Japan and the Republic of
China in the 1930s, 36 continuing through the State of Israel Bonds offered by the fledgling state beginning in 1951,3 7 to the recent successful Indian offering of Resurgent India Bonds in the wake of the
international sanctions following that country's 1998 nuclear tests.38
Bangladesh 9 and the Philippines 4° have considered issuing their own
Diaspora Bonds. One also can conceive easily of Diaspora Bonds offered by China and Mexico, as well as by many African, 41 Central or
34 Mark Nicholson, Scots Clans Eye Slice of American Pie, Fin. Times, Apr. 28,2000, at
6. Scotland seeks to spur business relations with the Scottish diaspora in North America,
which reportedly numbers between fifteen and forty million. Id. As the Council's chair
explains, "There are as many Macs in the New York phone book as in the Glasgow or
Edinburgh phone books." Id.
35 See infra Part IV.
36 SEC v. Chinese Consol. Benevolent Ass'n, 120 F.2d 738, 739, 741 (2d Cir. 1941)
(describing efforts by Chinese Benevolent Associations in United States to sell bonds for
China and by Japanese Patriotic Bond Subscription Society in United States to sell bonds
for Japan).
37 See infra notes 292, 303, 332, 333, and accompanying text.
38 See infra notes 306-25.
39 On the heels of the success of the Resurgent India Bonds, Bangladesh announced its
intention to appoint banks to manage its own issuance of Diaspora Bonds. Bangladesh
Readies Non-Resident Bond Issue, Emerging Markets week, Apr. 26, 1999, at 2. Bangladesh previously issued such instruments in 1986 with foreign currency wage Earner
Development Bonds specifically designed for migrant workers. Shivani Puri & Tineke
Ritzema, Migrant Worker Remittances, Micro-Finance and the Informal Economy. Prospects and Issues 14 (Int'l Labour Org., Working Paper No. 21, 1999), http'./Jvww.ilo.org/
publlclenglishlemploymentlent/papers/vpap2l.htm.
40 $500-M Bonds Eyed for OFWs, Manila Standard, Feb. 18, 2000, 2000 WL SS92265
(noting proposed $500 million bond issue targeted at overseas Filipino workers); Philippine
Government to Issue More Treasury Bonds Next Year, AFX News, Dec. 14, 1999, 1919
WL 25422960 (noting launch of dollar-denominated bonds targeting overseas Filipino
workers).
41 Diaspora Bonds issued by African states present the special difficulty that arises
from the evisceration of the personal histories of the enslaved Africans. namely, that it is
difficult if not impossible to identify a diaspora of a particular region. It is currently feasible only to identify an "African" diaspora, one encompassing all who are descended from
nearly the entire continent of Africa. See e. christi cunningham, The "Racing" Cause of
Action, 30 Rutgers L.J. 707,715 (1999). Orlando Patterson has called the procss by which
slavery sought to deny blacks their history, culture, family ties, and community "social
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South American, Asian, or European countries. 42 Because Diaspora
Bonds raise questions of choice of law, jurisdiction, dual loyalty, and
citizenship, they crystallize some of the legal issues raised by diasporas. 43 Accordingly, this Article offers a case study of the diaspora
model by applying it to the issues raised by Diaspora Bonds, particularly the Resurgent India Bonds. In addition, because Diaspora
Bonds represent an important mechanism by which poor nations can
tap the wealth of their relatively rich diasporas, the study is important
in its own right, providing a legal analysis of these instruments that
will assist countries in considering such offerings in the future.
Part I of this Article begins with an analysis of the rise of diaspora. It identifies and explains a discursive shift from the identification of people as "overseas communities," "exiles," or "minorities," 44
to their identification as "diasporas." The description of the rise of
diasporas sets the stage for Part II, which attempts to categorize the
legal claims that diasporas could make. In Part III, this Article considers three different models for resolving the legal issues raised by
diasporas and, ultimately, for defining the relationship of citizen to
state. It rejects the "statist" model, which demands loyalty to a single
sovereign. It also rejects the "cosmopolitan" alternative, which devalues the citizen's relationship to state as anything other than a logistical
device. Instead, it proposes a "diaspora model," which accepts the
dual loyalties of diasporas and even allows them some level of autonomy. Under the diaspora model, the hermetic sovereignty of nationstates is replaced by overlapping sovereignties dispersed among states
and diasporas. A case study of Diaspora Bonds in Part IV illuminates
the kinds of legal issues that arise out of the relations between the
diaspora and its homeland-particularly with respect to economic redeath." Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (1982). But
see Editorial, DNA to Link Blacks to African Past, Chi. Trib., Aug. 31, 2000, at 22 (concluding that, because of DNA technology, "the slavers did not win" in their efforts to erase
roots of African Americans); Tatsha Robertson, Families Seek Link Across Centuries:
DNA May Reunite Blacks, African Kin, Boston Globe, Aug. 13, 2000, at B3.
42 Noting the success of the Israeli bonds, for example, in 1994 Nobel Laureate and
Irish Prime Minister John Hume proposed "Peace Bonds" to raise money from the Irish
diaspora to support development in Northern Ireland. SDLP Call for Peace Dividend
Body, Irish Voice, Dec. 13, 1994, at 4, http://www.softlineweb.com/bin/KaStasGw.
exe?k_a=d5afmd.1.searchwin.w.; Sean MacCarthaigh, NY Pledge to Back Irish Economy if
Peace Bid Succeeds, Irish Times, July 5, 1997, at 16, LEXIS, News Group File. While
Hume's proposal has not been implemented, he has recently reiterated his desire to harness the "goodwill" of the diaspora in "the economic sphere." John Hume, Ireland-The
Healing Process, 22 Fordham Int'l L.J. 1171, 1177 (1999).
44 Khachig T6161yan, Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational
Moment, 5 Diaspora 3, 3 (1996) (describing shift from "exile groups, overseas communities, ethnic and racial minorities" to "diasporas").
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
lationships-and offers one application of the model. This Article
ends by offering some cautions and concluding thoughts.
This Article has three goals. First, it seeks to introduce diaspora
as a subject of legal inquiry by describing the concept of diaspora and
identifying legal issues that a diaspora raises. Second, it proposes an
alternative to the established statist and cosmopolitan models of citizenship, an alternative that reconciles globalization with people's desire for a sense of rootedness. Third, its case study of Diaspora Bonds
describes the legal issues that arise in the United States due to a (previously unnamed) capital-raising method that will prove important to
economic development.
I
THE RISE
A.
OF DIAsPoRA
Defining Diaspora
Diasporais the Greek word for "scattering" or "dispersion," and
derives from the compounding of the Greek prefix for "through" and
the Greek verb meaning "to sow or scatter."45 As used in English,
diaspora refers either to "the settling of scattered colonies of Jews
outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile" or, more generally, to
"the breaking up and scattering of a people. '46 The term presupposes
a people, such as the Jews, who once lived together in some defined
territory. It does not refer to the entirety of a dispersed people, but
only to "that segment of a people living outside the homeland." 47
While this definition accurately reflects how the term is often
used, it is subject to the moral objection that it does not require "doing": The diasporan individual need do nothing to show an affiliation
with a diaspora community, but yet may be branded part of it on ac4 The Oxford English Dictionary 613 (2d ed. 1989).
46 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 502 (deluxe ed. 1998).
47 Walker Connor, The Impact of Homelands Upon Diasporas, in Modem Diasporas in
International Politics 16, 16 (Gabriel Sheffer ed., 1986). Gabriel Sheffer offers yet another
definition, centered around what he considers three quintessential elements that must exist
if an ethnic group is to comprise a diaspora: identity, organization, and meaningful contact
with the homeland. Gabriel Sheffer, Ethnic Diasporas: A Threat to Their Hosts?, in International Migration and Security 263, 263 (Myron Weiner ed., 1993). However, by itself,
"identity" is unhelpful because its use here is recursive; it is identity itself that the word
"diaspora" helps to define. With respect to the second element, it seems unclear whether
"organization" should be treated as a quintessential element or rather as a factor determining how effective diasporas may be in asserting group preferences. The third element,
"meaningful contact with the homeland," is indeed important because it avoids "biologism" in favor of self-identification. Infra note 48 and accompanying text.
45
[Vol. 76:1005
count of her genealogy. It risks "biologism," as Khachig T6lrlyan, the
48
editor of the journal Diaspora,calls it,
or identity based on biology.
As the links to a homeland increasingly become attenuated with
each successive generation in the new country, many will identify only
with their parents' adopted country, not with the homeland of their
ancestors. Others may have left their homeland specifically because
they reject its norms and prefer those of the adopted country. If, as
discussed later, diaspora serves as a means towards reaching the ideal
of personal authenticity, it would undermine that goal to deny someone the ability to reject a connection to her homeland. 49 By definition, then, "the diasporic segment .. labors to remain in interaction
with the larger transnation which includes the homeland and other
diasporic segments. ' '50 Leaving a homeland can sever an ancient relationship with a particular people or land.51
But even this more liberal position, permitting people to "opt
out" of the diaspora, can itself be criticized as "biologic." An individual, regardless of her cultural or emotional affinities with a particular
homeland or people, cannot join that people simply by personal declaration. There is no "opting in" to the diaspora for individuals who do
not share that diaspora's homeland. This criticism is powerful, relying
upon the freedom to choose as the only basis for things of moral consequence. It would be too romantic, however, to think of our identities as fully self-crafted. We are constituted in part by our histories;
denying the moral role of these histories seems ruthless.5 2 As
48 Til1yan, supra note 44, at 30.
49 See infra Part III.C.2. The primacy given here to individual choice is consistent with
Amartya Sen's notion of "development as freedom," that is, the idea that economic development should be defined as the expansion of the opportunities for human functioning.
See Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom 3 (1999). This Article focuses on the
diasporan individual who is likely to be found in the economically developed world rather
than, as is Sen's focus, on the individual living in the developing world. Nevertheless, the
principle of freedom described by Sen certainly is relevant worldwide, and even more so
here given that a major concern of this Article is with how the diaspora can support economic development in its homeland.
50 T6161yan, supra note 44, at 29.
51 Cf. Michael Walzer, On Involuntary Association, in Freedom of Association 64, 64
(Amy Gutmann ed., 1998) ("I want to argue that freedom requires nothing more than the
possibility of breaking involuntary bonds and, furthermore, that the actual break is not
always a good thing, and that we need not always make it easy.").
52 Michael Sandel criticizes the liberal egalitarian philosophy of John Rawls on precisely this point, observing that Rawls would require us to shed our attachments in making
the constitutive decisions for a political society. See Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the
Limits of Justice 179 (2d ed. 1998) (
[W]e cannot regard ourselves as independent... without great cost to those
loyalties and convictions whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living by them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are-as members of this family or community or nation or people, as
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
Amartya Sen writes, "[t]he real options ... are always limited by our
looks, our circumstances, and our background and history." 53 At the
same time, it is not necessary to see identity in a strong communitarian sense of being an immanent quality waiting to be discovered or
revealed. 54 Rather, the approach offered by Charles Taylor, in which
identity is created and recreated in a dynamic process between the
individual and her environment, seems more compelling5
The fiction of voluntary association as the basis for political legitimacy found in many contractarian liberal and libertarian theories 56
finds a certain degree of realization in migrants: While many people
are forced to leave their country, driven out by war or poverty, many
modem migrants do choose the society in which they live, though this
choice is often dictated by immigration laws, the individual's economic resources, and the receptivity of different societies to people
like that individual migrant. Focusing on the voluntary nature of
membership in a diaspora distinguishes it from traditional citizenship,
which we ascribe most often on the basis of birth or ancestry-not on
any action demonstrating volition, except, of course, naturalization
and renunciation. An individual could demonstrate her membership
in a diaspora by maintaining her citizenship in the homeland, but she
might also demonstrate it through voluntary homeland-regarding actions shy of citizenship.
The requirement of voluntary action signals the individualistic approach adopted here. While diaspora by its very nature connotes a
group, the requirement that individuals conceive of themselves as
bearers of this history, as sons and daughters of that revolution, as citizens of
this republic.).
53 Amartya Sen, Reason Before Identity 17-18 (1999); see also K. Anthony Appiah,
Identity, Authenticity, Survival, in Multiculturalism, supra note 28, at 149, 155 ("We make
up selves from a tool kit of options made available by our culture and society. We do make
choices, but we do not determine the options among which we choose.").
54 Appiah describes this as the error of thinking that there is a "real self buried in there,
the self one has to dig out and express." Appiah, supra note 53, at 155.
55 See infra Part III.C.2; see also Taylor, supra note 28.
56 See, e.g., Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 131-32 (Oxford Press 1909) (1651) (describing
creation of state "Leviathan" as arising from "Covenant" in which each person submits his
will to will of state); John Locke, Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning
Toleration 67 (Charles L. Sherman ed., 1979) (1690) (characterizing move from state of
nature to "politic societies" as beginning "from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors and forms of government");
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice 16 (1971) (describing theory of justice as founded on
hypothetical contract consisting of set of principles to which society would agree). But see,
e.g., Lea Brilmayer, Consent, Contract, and Territory, 74 Minn. L. Rev. 1, 5 (1989) (questioning this fiction by arguing that "[ain individual's unwillingness to incur the extraordinary costs of leaving his or her birthplace should not be treated as a consensual
undertaking to obey state authority").
[Vol. 76:1005
members of a diaspora in order for that characteristic to have any
legitimate purchase returns us to an individualistic foundation.
The relationship between a diaspora and its homeland need not
include the diaspora's "desire for eventual return. 57 Many individuals living in diaspora do not evince such a desire.5 8 One dispersed
population, the Romani, does not seem to hold a hope for return to
their homeland; it may have no vision of a homeland at all.59 Other
diasporas may be split between those who desire to return and those
who do not.
Though diasporas do not necessarily share a teleology of return,
the homeland exerts a strong emotional pull on the diaspora. 60 As
one writer describes: "Perhaps hoping for recognition from their land,
it is not uncommon to see members of the [Eritrean] Diaspora kissing
the ground and raising their hands to the sky upon finally returning to
6
Eritrea." 1
The relationship between diasporan individuals and the homeland (or, for a lack of a homeland, with each other across state boundaries) distinguishes the notion of "diaspora" from that of "ethnic
group" or "immigrant." A diaspora, as T6161yan suggests, acts consistently for the homeland in an organized fashion, whereas the ethnic
community has little or no commitment to maintain connections with
its homeland and the connections that exist are manifested by individuals rather than the community as a whole. 62 Similarly, the concepts
of "immigrant," "minority," and "person of color" neglect the
57 Clifford, supra note 6, at 305 (referring to William Safran, Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return, 1 Diaspora 83, 83-84 (1991)).
58 As James Clifford points out, even a significant portion of the Jewish diaspora, used
as an archetype by William Safran, would not meet this criterion because many Jews in
diaspora did not seek to return to their homeland, except as part of a religious eschatology.
Clifford, supra note 6, at 305 (referring to Safran, supra note 57, at 83-24, 91); see also
Clifford, supra note 6, at 322 (finding "ambivalence in Jewish tradition, from biblical times
to the present, regarding claims for a territorial basis of identity") (citing Daniel Boyarin &
Jonathan Boyarin, Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity, 19 Critical
Inquiry 693 (1993)); Arnold M. Eisen, Galut: Modem Jewish Reflection on Homelessness
and Homecoming 50 (1986) (noting medieval and early modern rabbis' "pronounced ambivalence concerning the Land's centrality").
59 T6161yan, supra note 44, at 32 n.17. The main body representing Europe's twelve
million Roma has recently declared the Roma to constitute a "'non-territorial"' nation.
One reporter calls it a "'country' which boasts a flag and an anthem but neither borders
nor an army." Gary Younge, A Nation Is Born: Europe and Race: Gypsies Build a Defense Against Extremism As Germans Wring Their Hands, Guardian, July 31, 2000, at 15.
60 The Roma appear to be an exception to this, if they are to constitute a diaspora.
61 Peggy A. Hoyle, The Eritrean National Identity: A Case Study, 24 N.C. J.Int'l L. &
Com. Reg. 381, 410 (1999).
DIASPORA BONDS
October 20011
diasporan community to which the person may belong, as well as that
community's relationship to the homeland.
The nature of the emigrant's relationship to her homeland cannot
be predicted with any great certainty. The ethnic studies scholar Lingchi Wang offers a typology for the different orientations Chinese
Americans have towards China. The different types depict the different possible relationships of the diasporan individual to her roots
(gen, in Chinese); 63 they are:
" Yeluo guigen (to return, as fallen leaves return to their roots):
The sojourner who intends to return home eventually; 64
" Zhancao chugen (to eliminate weeds, one must pull out their
65
roots): The assimilationist;
* Luodi shenggen (to settle down or sow seeds in a foreign land
and accommodate to the host society): The accommoda66
tionist;
" Xungen wenzu (to search for one's roots and ancestors): The
person with ethnic pride or consciousness; 67
" Shigen qunzu (to lose contact with one's roots and ancestors):
The uprooted, the alienated, the wandering intellectual away
from her roots in historic China, in exile. 68
Kwok Bun Chan adds a sixth type, the one most typical of the
diaspora model:
* Zhonggen (to embody multiple rootedness or consciousness):
69
The person who values her diverse roots.
Ling-chi Wang's use of metaphor to describe the diasporan experience vividly depicts the myriad ways that a person might approach
her experience as an immigrant. 70 Moreover, as cultural studies have
taught us, a person may shift approaches from time to time, gyrating
between alienation and assimilation, for example. 7 ' The individual
63 L. Ling-chi Wang, Roots and Changing Identity of the Chinese in the United States,
Daedalus, Spring 1991, at 181, 182, 192.
64 Id. at 193-95.
65 Id. at 196-99.
66 Id. at 199-200.
67 Id. at 200-02.
68 Id. at 202-05.
69 Kwok Bun Chan, A Family Affair Migration Dispersal, and the Emergent Identity
of the Chinese Cosmopolitan, 6 Diaspora 195, 206-07 (1997).
70 William Safran has characterized this as a "continuum of ethnicity ranging from assimilation to intense ethnopolitical mobilization." Safran, supra note 57, at 84.
71 See Sen, supra note 53, at 17 (observing that "our loyalties and self definitions often
oscillate"); Wang, supra note 63 at 198 (noting that "a person may move from one identity
to another").
1020
[Vol. 76:1005
may adopt different identities in different contexts, defining or revealing herself differently before different groups of people. 72
It is the zhancao chugen (the complete assimilationist who pulls
out her roots) who, despite her Chinese ancestry, would not belong to
the Chinese diaspora, which by our definition requires an individual
commitment to a transnational community or homeland. Perhaps also
the shigen qunzu (the person who has lost contact with her roots, who
is alienated from them) and the luodi shenggen (the person who sinks
roots and accommodates in the foreign land) may, at least at times,
not consider themselves members of the Chinese diaspora. The yeluo
guigen (the sojourner who returns to her roots), the xungen wenzu
(the person who expresses ethnic pride or consciousness), and the
zhonggen (who values her diverse roots) clearly offer diaspora
archetypes. 73
With this background, then, we can offer this working definition
of "diaspora": that part of a people, dispersed in one or more countries other than its homeland, that maintains a feeling of transnational
community among a people and its homeland.
B. History: From Ancient to Modern
The discourse of diaspora has evolved from the ancient experience of the Hellenes and, later, the Jews, through its use to describe
the Armenian experience, to the late modern adoption (or appropriation) of the term by many displaced, transnational peoples. Where
once there were dispersions, overseas communities, immigrants, minorities, and just one diaspora-the Jewish Diaspora-there are now
diasporas of many peoples. 74
Given that "diaspora" is a Greek word, it has naturally been used
since antiquity to refer to the many migrations of the Greek people.
In his History of the Peloponnesian War (written between circa 421
B.C. and circa 400 B.C.), 75 Thucydides employed the root form of the
See E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, at 8 (1990) (noting that
individual may think of self as British citizen, Indian, or Gujarati, depending on circumstances); Orlando Patterson, Context and Choice in Ethnic Allegiance: A Theoretical
Framework and Caribbean Case Study, in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience 305, 307-08
(Nathan Glazer & Daniel P. Moynihan eds., 1975) (describing cases of black Jamaicans,
Puerto Ricans, and Jamaican Sephardic Jews who choose to emphasize different ethnic
identifications in different social contexts).
73 The last type accepts the "double consciousness" common to diaspora members. See
infra notes 250-57 and accompanying text.
75 See 18 Encyclopaedia Britannica 359 (15th ed. 1974) (stating that Thucydides began
writing History of the Peloponnesian War soon after Peace of Nicias in 421 B.C.); 11 Encylopaedia Britannica 456 (11th ed. 1911) (stating that Thucydides died circa 400 B.C.).
72
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
term to refer to the scattering of the population of the Greek city76
state of Aegina after its destruction by the Athenians in 431 B.C.
The term became identified with the Jewish dispersion via the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, circa 250 B.C.
The Oxford English Dictionary locates an early reference to "diaspora" in Deuteronomy 28:25 in the Septuagint. 77 That dictionary
translates a portion of this verse into English as: "[T]hou shalt be a
diaspora... in all kingdoms of the earth. '78 With the destruction of
Jerusalem and its Temple by the Romans and the uprooting of the
rural Jewish populations (circa 66-140 A.D.), the concept of diaspora
"became suffused with the suffering that accompanies many sorts of
exile."'79 With this dispersion, the term "diaspora" came to be applied
to Jews throughout the Graeco-Roman world.
In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo noted the dispersion of the
Armenian ethnic group during his travels.80 By this time, there were
already many diasporan Armenians, as they had been pushed out of
their homeland by conquering groups beginning as early as the sixth
century with the Byzantine expulsion of thousands of Armenians to
the Philippopolis (Plovdiv) region. 81 The Seljuk Turks captured the
Armenian capital city of Ani in 1064 A.D., and defeated the Byzantine emperor in 1071 A.D., resulting in a period of widespread migration of some 200,000 Armenian refugees.6Nearly a millennium later, in the late 1960s, black scholars began
employing the unifying concept of diaspora to describe all of the descendants of the Africans who survived the middle passage and other
African dispersions. According to one scholar, the "African diaspora
concept subsumes .. the global dispersion (voluntary and involuntary) of Africans throughout history; the emergence of a cultural identity abroad based on origin and social condition; and the psychological
or physical return to the homeland, Africa."' 3 The concept of an AfriT616yan, supra note 44, at 10-11; see 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica 108 (15th ed. 1993)
(entry for "aegina"). Earlier in his History, Thucydides used the verb "diaspeire" to refer
to the Athenian forces who became dispersed through Troy, eventually settling there.
T61 1yan, supra note 44, at 10-11. Other ancient references to "diaspora" include
Herodotus, Books V-VII 397 (A.D. Godley trans., G.P. Goold ed., Loeb Classical Library
1922) (referring to "Trojans of the dispersal").
77 4 Oxford English Dictionary 613 (2d ed. 1989).
78 Id. The major English translations of the Bible, however, do not use the word dias.
pora, preferring dispersion instead. Cf. id. (referring to books of James and I Peter).
79 T6 61yan, supra note 44, at 11-12.
8o Armstrong, supra note 30, at 394.
81 David Marshall Lang, The Armenians: A People in Exile 99 (1981).
82 Id. at 99-100.
83 Joseph E. Harris, Introduction to Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora 3, 3
(Joseph E. Harris ed., 2d ed. 1993).
76
[Vol. 76:1005
can diaspora, imported from "unacknowledged Jewish sources," 84 fit
well with the view of a common Pan-African people, including Africans and their Caribbean, American, European, Pacific, and Asian
descendants.
From there, the term was taken up by scholars to refer to the
experience of almost every significant displacement and dispersion of
a people,8 5 thereby returning the word to its original Greek roots.
Scholars by then spoke of an Irish diaspora, an Indian diaspora, and a
Chinese diaspora.8 6 The use of the term was often political and
sought to establish a common identity through a shared historical ex87
perience to gain political strength through numbers and solidarity.
Others suggested that the concept of diaspora described their experience better than other available concepts. One scholar explains his
use of the term "diaspora" rather than "emigration": "I choose the
word 'diaspora' for the transplantation of my community from India
to the French West Indies... because it carries psychological connotations of deep sorrow and suffering, inconsolable mourning along with
the everlasting feeling of being torn inside."88 Along with the jarring
dislocation from the homeland that it might recall, however, the term
"diaspora" converted dispersed and often disempowered individuals
into a single community, with shared interests, history, and goals.
84 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness xi (1993);
see also Clifford, supra note 6, at 321 (discussing "ongoing entanglement of black and
Jewish disapora visions").
85 See, e.g., Sharon K. Horn, Introduction to Chinese Women Traversing Diaspora:
Memoirs, Essays, and Poetry 3, 14-16 (Sharon K. Horn ed., 1999); Martin Baumann, Shangri-La in Exile: Portraying Tibetan Diaspora Studies and Reconsidering Diaspora(s), 6
Diaspora 377 (1997); Anne-Marie Fortier, The Politics of "Italians Abroad": Nation, Diaspora, and New Geographies of Identity, 7 Diaspora 197 (1998); Brij V. Lal, The Odyssey of
Indenture: Fragmentation and Reconstitution in the Indian Diaspora, 5 Diaspora 167
(1996) (describing scope of Indian indentured emigration, which introduced over one million Indians to other British colonies); Palestinian Diaspora & Refugee Centre (Shaml),
http://www.shaml.org (visited Nov. 10, 1999) (describing center as seeking "to strengthen
links between Palestinian communities in the Diaspora and the homeland"); Paul
Gillespie, New Ireland Needs to Hear From Its Expatriates, Irish Times, Sept. 9, 2000,
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/archive/ (observing that "[t]hrough the 1990s there was
a sea-change in attitudes towards the Irish abroad. Gradually the term diaspora was accepted to describe them, as awareness grew that this is a tremendous resource in an era of
globalisation").
86 See supra note 85.
87 Cf. supra note 85.
88 Lotus Vingadassamy-Engel, The Hindu Diaspora in the French West-Indies, India
Int'l Centre Q., Monsoon 1992, at 6, 6.
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
C. Explaining the Rise of Diaspora
Drawing upon Benedict Anderson's language of an "imagined
community,"8 9 cultural studies scholar James Clifford observes that
"[t]he language of diaspora is increasingly invoked by displaced peoples who feel (maintain, revive, invent) a connection with a prior
home." 90 How and why did this renaming-from "exile groups, over-
seas communities, [and] ethnic and racial minorities"91 into "diaspora"-occur?
The rise of diaspora consciousness at the turn of the millennium
can be attributed in part to some of the same factors that led to the
rise of national consciousness in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Benedict Anderson finds that people began to imagine nations
as a result of the interaction between capitalism, print communication,
and linguistic diversity.92 Analogously, diaspora consciousness has
been aided by the increasing wealth of diasporas, revolutions in communication and transportation technologies, and continuing feelings
of difference. 93 Many members of diasporas have been able to move
89 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism 5-7 (rev. ed. 1991) (describing nation-state as "imagined political
community").
Clifford, supra note 6, at 310.
T61l1yan, supra note 44, at 3.
Anderson, supra note 89, at 42-43.
93 Tololyan identifies a parallel list of factors that help explain the rise of diasporas;
these factors include:
" Accelerated immigration to the industrialized world coupled with easier
modes of communication and travel;
" Changes in countries' apparatus for addressing immigration (To161yan notes
the increasing tendency of many nations, especially the United States, to
permit immigrants "the choice as to whether to assimilate or to emerge as
ethnodiasporan groups");
" Greater degrees of institutional organization in the national homelands, and
the extent to which that organization accompanies the emigrants;
" Proportion of immigrants relative to the indigenous population (with rapid
concentration in one geographical area tending to endure as a diaspora);
" Racial difference (with higher feelings of racial difference contributing to
diasporization);
" Real or perceived religious incompatibility;,
" The emergence of the Israeli state as a figure of diasporan achievement;
" The special-interest state (a growing realization of the power wielded by special interests over national policies, leading to a willingness of immigrant
groups to exercise that power themselves);
" The upward devolution of state power in Europe (leading to the possibility
of supra-state power); and
" The American university (as the site of transnational multiculturalism, the
humanities revolution that transformed categories, and the paradigm shift
away from assimilation).
T6l1yan, supra note 44, at 20-27.
90
91
92
[Vol. 76:1005
beyond the struggle for economic survival in their new lands and are
becoming increasingly empowered by their accumulated capital. Better and cheaper telecommunications technologies, especially the Internet, 94 and more easily available transportation permit people in the
diaspora to maintain connections to their relatives in their homelands.
Feelings of difference, like those arising out of linguistic diversity, may
persist because immigrants, even second and third generation ones,
still are often treated as "foreigners," 95 leading some to seek refuge in
their diaspora community.
Clifford makes this last point, observing that "[d]iaspora consciousness is... constituted both negatively and positively. '96 It is
constituted negatively "by experiences of discrimination and exclusion" and positively "through identification with world historical cultural/political forces, such as 'Africa' or 'China. ' '97 The negative
construction arises as threats from other groups cause stronger ties
among the diaspora to be forged as a defense, just as danger from
other peoples may have helped create nation-states. 98 Alienation
from the majority society may lead to a greater solidarity in the diaspora, a solidarity that may at times minimize internal differences that
would have been more noticeable in the homeland. For example,
"Balkan immigrants to Canada whose first wave regarded themselves
as 'Dalmatians' or 'Istrians' responded to the experience of discrimination, combined with that of being lumped and regarded as 'one' by
the dominant majority in Canada, by developing a view of themselves
as Croats." 99
At the same time, however, threats from other groups based on
one's minority status may lead one to take steps to hide that minority
status, to assimilate, or to pass. While it may be impossible to rid
oneself completely of one's racial markers, that does not stop one
from trying, at least, to minimize difference. Vijay Mishra finds this
94 See Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
194-96 (1996) (describing role of "mass media, especially in its electronic forms, in creating
new sorts of disjuncture between spatial and virtual neighborhoods"); Henry H. Perritt, Jr.,
Cyberspace and State Sovereignty, 3 J. Int'l Legal Stud. 155, 163 (1997) (describing Internet as "technique for organizing those with shared interests. It permits members of
relatively specialized diaspora to find each other anywhere in the world"). India recently
launched a website for its diaspora, http://www.IndianDiaspora.nic.in (last visited April 14,
2001), seeking "to nurture [the] symbiotic relationship" between the diaspora and the people of India.
95 See infra note 101 (citing literature examining "foreignness").
96 Clifford, supra note 6, at 311.
97 Id. at 311, 312.
98 See Franck, supra note 6, at 367 (observing that sense of danger may be "one of the
historic factors that forge nation-states").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
futile, saying that such markers lead almost inexorably to hyphenaAmerican:
tion, to an identity as a(n)
[T]he pure, unhyphenated generic category is only applicable to
those citizens whose bodies signify an unproblematic identity of
selves with nations. For those of us who are outside of this identity
politics, whose corporealities fissure the logic of unproblematic
identification, plurallmulticultural societies have constructed the impure genre of the hyphenated subject. 100
The host society often imposes a "foreignness" on the immigrant such
that the immigrant's efforts to assimilate may be in vain.101
In addition, the modem diaspora would not exist without the historical development of the nation-state. 10 2 The rise of the nation-state
and its focus on territoriality dialectically created the modem understandings that strengthened a diaspora consciousness. This process
strikingly recalls the way in which the nineteenth-century colonial
state "dialectically engendered the grammar of the nationalisms that
eventually arose to combat it."103 In this sense, diaspora is the ne100 Mishra, supra note 15, at 433.
101 See Nel Gotanda, Race, Citizenship, and the Search for Political Community
Among "We the People": A Review Essay on Citizenship Without Consent, 76 Or. L
Rev. 233, 252 (1997) (describing imposition of "foreignness" as "recurrent form of racism"); see also Kevin R. Johnson, Racial Hierarchy, Asian Americans and Latinos as
"Foreigners," and Social Change: Is Law the Way to Go?, 76 Or. L Rev. 347, 352-58
(1997) (examining similarities between Latino and Asian American experiences as "foreigners" in the United States); Natsu Taylor Saito, Alien and Non-Alien Alike: Citizenship, "Foreignness" and Racial Hierarchy in American Law, 76 Or. L Rev. 261 (1997)
(exploring presumption of "foreignness" of Asian Americans, its legal and social influences, and its role in preservation of racial and social hierarchy); Natsu Taylor Saito, Model
Minority, Yellow Peril: Functions of "Foreignness" in the Construction of Asian American
Legal Identity, 4 Asian LJ. 71 (1997) (examining relationship of "foreignness" to contradictory portrayal of Asian Americans and reinforcement of racial hierarchy); Enid TruciosHaynes, Latino/as in the Mix: Applying Gotanda's Models of Racial Classification and
Racial Stratification, 4 Asian L.J. 39, 53-59 (1997) (discussing legal and analytical implications of identification as "foreigner").
102 CL Jon Stratton, (Dis)placing the Jews: Historicizing the Idea of Diaspora, 6 Diaspora 301, 310 (1997). He states:
The modem discourse of diaspora evolved out of the association of the idea
that a national population is homogeneous and the idea that it is distributed
over a particular territorial space; that is, the new, nineteenth-century usage of
'diaspora' developed as a way of talking about people who were thought of as
being out of place, displaced.
Id. (emphasis in original).
103 Id. at xiv. Alternatively, some have suggested that diasporas are gaining strength
now due to the contemporary debilitation of the nation-state. See, e.g., Stratton, supra
note 102, at 303 (associating rise of world diaspora to "weakening of the meaning of the
nation-state"); cf., e.g., Tololyan, supra note 44, at 4 ("[J]ust as the nation-state has begun
to encounter limits to its supremacy and perhaps even to lose some of its sovereignty,
diasporas have emerged in scholarly and intellectual discourse.").
[Vol. 76:1005
glected child of the international system-created by that system, yet
ignored by it.
Also crucial to this recharacterization from immigrants to diaspora is what Thomas Franck identifies as "a growing consciousness of
a personal right to compose one's identity. ' 104 According to Franck,
international law now shows a greater receptivity for an individual asserting her membership in a transnational community, such as that of
a diaspora.
The rise of diaspora, or the assertion of membership in a transnational community, will, somewhat counterintuitively, trouble many
diasporan individuals themselves. Immigrants' alleged refusal to assimilate has long been used to justify discrimination against them, so
any suggestion that any group of immigrants still retains its ties to its
homeland or to other expatriates may jeopardize the reception of that
group in its new country. 105 The mass internment of Japanese Americans (and not other groups such as German Americans and Italian
Americans) during World War II rested in part on the view that persons of Japanese descent belonged to "an enemy whose racial strains
are undiluted."'1 06 Individuals such as Fred Korematsu bravely protested this characterization, resting their claims in part on their status
as pure Americans with no loyalties abroad. 07 But the rise of diasporas suggests that individuals now are more able and willing to maintain and reveal their transnational community despite the potential
negative consequences attending such an approach.
104 Franck, supra note 6, at 359; see also Franck, supra note 28 (further developing idea
of growing consciousness). For Franck, this right to choose one's own identity includes
more than the right to define oneself by one's ancestry, but also to maintain transnational
communities based on all sorts of commonalities, such as interests or political activism.
See id. at 79 (
[M]any individuals now tend to define themselves on the basis of dependent
variables (such as their economic self interest) rather than being governed by
independent variables (such as their race). 'Environmentalists, human rights
activists, women, children, animal rights advocates, consumers, the disabled,
gays and indigenous peoples have all gone international.')
(quoting Peter J. Spiro, New Global Communities: Nongovernmental Organizations in
International Decision-Making Institutions, Wash. Q., Winter 1995, at 45, 45).
106 Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 236 (1944) (Murphy, J., dissenting) (quoting final military report on Japanese evacuation); see also Trucios-Haynes, supra note 101,
at 56 ("Clearly the results in Korematsu indicate that the element of foreignness as part of
a racial identity is maintained regardless of citizenship status, when a group is viewed as
unassimilable.").
107 Even the authorities did not claim that Korematsu was disloyal. See Korematsu, 323
U.S. at 243 (Jackson, J., dissenting) ("No claim is made that he is not loyal to this
country.").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
Through this historical sketch, we see how "a term once saturated
with the meanings of exile, loss, dislocation, powerlessness and plain
pain"'u0 has transformed, through an assertion of discursive power
and through improvement in the actual condition of dispersed peoples, into one that is valorized and deployed to build community and
demand recognition.
A description of the rise of diaspora serves two purposes. First, it
demonstrates a growing diaspora consciousness at the turn of the millennium, positioning diaspora as a subject for inquiry into the contemporary condition. Second, the history and description of diaspora help
define and refine the concept, thus laying the groundwork for understanding what legal claims diasporas may assert. It is to the identification of such claims that we now turn.
II
THE LEGAL CLAIMS OF =HE NEw DAsPor1As
What legal claims are groups that have a diaspora consciousness
making? What kinds of claims might they make in the future? A typology of claims serves a number of purposes. First, it enables policymakers to think comprehensively about diasporas and their
implications for law. Second, it distinguishes diasporas as an analytical concept from close alternatives such as ethnic groups and minorities, whose own claim types will overlap with those of diasporas, but
will not coincide perfectly. Finally, by identifying a claim as belonging
to a larger general category of claims, it forces responses to that claim
to be framed in terms of general principles, rather than ad hoe solutions.' 0 9 This Article offers the following typology:110
" Diasporas make claims for recognitionfrom both their adopted
countries and their homelands. Implicit in such recognition is
the rejection of the adopted country's assimilationist strategies
in immigration law and in education.
" Diasporas favor the possibility of dual nationality. Dual nationality allows individuals in diaspora to maintain officially
109 Benedict Kingsbury makes this point nicely- "The lack of a generalized normative
and procedural framework has also reinforced inevitable tendencies of major states to react in different ways to different claims, not for principled universal reasons but for panicularist reasons reflecting the special interests of major states and decisionmakers."
Benedict Kingsbury, Claims by Non-State Groups, 25 Cornell Int'l IJ. 481, 508 (1992).
110 Kingsbury offers a more general typology for all nonstate groups. He describes five
different "domains of discourse" in which claims by nonstate groups are asserted: claims
to self-determination, minority rights claims, human rights claims, claims to sovereignty
legitimized by historical arguments or other special circumstances, and claims to special
rights by virtue of prior occupation. Id. at 486-96.
[Vol. 76:1005
sanctioned connections to a foreign state, whereas recognition
of the diaspora gives official sanction to the transnational community itself.
" Diasporas may seek a minimum amount of self-governance or,
alternatively, governance by their homeland's government.'
It is this exception to domestic jurisdiction that is the central
112
issue with respect to Diaspora Bonds.
" Diasporas may seek to discriminate in favor of other diaspora
members, restricting access only to members of the diaspora.' 1 3
For example, they may establish rotating credit associations
open only to others in the diaspora.114 This issue is raised
squarely by the Resurgent India Bonds, which are available for
purchase only by the Indian diaspora as defined by the Indian
5
government."1
" Diasporas may seek to petition the government of the adopted
country on behalf of, or at least with respect to, the
homeland.
116
" Diasporas may make multiculturalclaims.11 7 Diasporas, generally belonging to a minority culture in their adopted land, may
seek to protect their own culture (or cultures) 1' 8 against the
I" This may be for good or bad. Citing the absence of labor law protection in the Chinatown garment industry, one commentator observes that "Chinatowns remain in some
ways beyond the reach of formal American law .... ." Teemu Ruskola, Conceptualizing
Corporations and Kinship: Comparative Law and Development Theory in a Chinese Perspective, 52 Stan. L. Rev. 1599, 1727 (2000).
112 See infra Parts IV.A.4, IV.C, IV.D.
113 Charles Jones calls this type of discrimination "compatriot favouritism." Charles
Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism 112-34 (1999).
114 Cao, supra note 23, at 874-84.
115 See infra Part IV.E.
116 See, e.g., Yossi Shain, Marketing the Democratic Creed Abroad: US Diasporic Politics in the Era of Multiculturalism, 3 Diaspora 85, 85-87 (1994) (discussing influence of
diasporic populations on U.S. foreign policy); Yossi Shain, Multicultural Foreign Policy,
100 Foreign Pol'y 69,71 (1995) (same). The diaspora also is likely to be directly involved in
the domestic politics of its homeland. One paper reports that, because of its important
Sikh community, "'Vancouver is now a fund-raising stop for anyone who wants to get
elected to anything in Punjab."' James Brooke, Sikhs on the Rise in British Columbia,
N.Y. Times Int'l Ed., July 18, 2000, at A8 (quoting Canadian reporter Kim Boland).
117 See Jacob T. Levy, Classifying Cultural Rights, 39 Nomos 22, 25 (1997) (categorizing
classes of cultural claims).
118 Any particular diaspora is itself likely to be multicultural. The African experience
demonstrates this: "The uniformity of Black social identification throughout the Black
diaspora is by virtue of the fact that a Black person is viewed as distinct because of appearance, ancestry, or both, and not because of any commonality in culture." Tanya Kateri
Hernandez, Multiracial Discourse: Racial Classifications in an Era of Color-Blind Jurisprudence, 57 Md. L. Rev. 97, 112 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added) (1998); see also
Gilroy, supra note 84, at 195 (discussing journal that reflected "developing awareness of
the African diaspora as a transnational and intercultural multiplicity").
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
dominant culture. Diasporas may demand freedom of movement.119 They may demand the right to pass freely between
their homeland and their adopted land, and to bring their capital and possessions with them. 12 0
" Diasporas may seek liberal inmigrationpolicies, especially policies oriented towards family reunification, to permit other
members of their homeland community to join them.
" Finally, diasporas may desire representation in international
lawmaking.' 2 ' As a transnational community, their lives will be
especially vulnerable to international sanctions and other restrictions on the movement of capital, goods, and people. Diasporas may not be able to depend on their adopted or homeland
governments to champion their interests internationally. The
diaspora might, for example, wish to see a change in its homeland's government, but the diaspora's adopted country's government may not be willing to expend political capital agitating
for such a change. Diasporas are distinct from nongovernmental organizations, which have become accepted participants in
international lawmaking, because diasporas represent a transnational political community characterized by the kinship loyalties of a people, which generally differ in character from
those that bind an association of individuals.
H
TiE LAW'S RESPONSE
A.
The Statist Model
To resolve many of these questions, the conventional approach
would appeal to the principle of strict territorial sovereignty. This
principle is said to have originated in the Peace of Westphalia, signed
119 For example, Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, has proposed the radical step of
opening the U.S.-Mexico border to permit people to move freely between the two countries. Marjorie Valbrun, Mexican Leader's Vision for Border Collides With U.S. Political
Realities, Wall St. J., Aug. 24, 2000, at A24.
120 Freedom of movement as it stands now encompasses three key subsidiary rights: the
right to leave any country, the right to return to one's own country, and the right to move
freely within a country into which one is lawfully admitted. See Reg'I Bureau for Europe,
United Nations High Comm'r for Refugees, NGO Manual on Int'l and Regi! Instruments
Concerning Refugees and Human Rights 251-64 (1998) (discussing freedom of movement).
It does not include "a general right to enter the country of one's choice." Id. at 251.
121 Cf. John F. Stack, Jr., Ethnic Groups as Emerging Transnational Actors, in Ethnic
Identifies in a Transnational World 17, 27 (John F. Stack ed., 1981) (describing ethnic
groups' participation in world politics).
[Vol. 76:1005
in 1648, an event which ushered in the modern era of nation-states, 122
with each entity being completely sovereign and having unlimited
power over its own territory.12 3 As the international relations scholar
Stephen Krasner describes, "[t]he fundamental norm of Westphalian
sovereignty is that states exist in specific territories, within which domestic political authorities are the sole arbiters of legitimate behavior." 124 Along with this notion of territorial dominion developed an
international system that recognized states as the only juridical entities capable of participating in the international system.
The "statist" model, then, consists of two fundamental principles:
(1) an international system of states which exercise exclusive dominion over their own territories; and (2) states which are the sole sources
of authoritative decision in international law. Statism exalts the state
as the nearly exclusive entity authorized to assert coercive power, subject only to a limited set of international constraints.1 25 International
relations scholars such as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, and
Stephen Krasner are among statism's most prominent proponents, t26
but it is perhaps most popular among the world's policymakers and
122 Stephen D. Krasner, Compromising Westphalia, 20 Int'l Security 115, 115 (1995/96)
("The Peace of Westphalia... is taken to mark the beginning of the modem international
system as a universe composed of sovereign states, each with exclusive authority within its
own geographic boundaries."). Others place the development of the sovereign state much
earlier, for example in the work of Hendrik Spruyt at around the year 1000. Harold K.
Jacobson, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, 90 Am. J. Int'l L. 526, 526 (1996)
(book review).
123 Stephen D. Krasner, Pervasive Not Perverse: Semi-Sovereigns as the Global Norm,
30 Cornell Int'l L.J. 651, 656 (1997) ("The Westphalian model is an institutional arrangement for organizing political life that is based on two principles: territoriality and autonomy. States exist in specific territories. Within these territories, domestic political
authorities are the only arbiters of legitimate behavior."). Kenneth Randall and John
Norris note that, in the context of international business, under the Westphalian paradigm
each nation applied its own law to behavior within its borders; they argue that this paradigm stymied efforts to develop supranational private international law. Kenneth C. Randall & John E. Norris, A New Paradigm for International Business Transactions, 71 Wash.
U. L.Q. 599, 630-31 (1993).
124 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy 20 (1999). Put more graphically, "[t]he Westphalian system refers to the organization of the world into territorially
exclusive, sovereign nation-states, each with an internal monopoly of legitimate violence."
James A. Caporaso, The European Union and Forms of State: Westphalian, Regulatory or
Post-Modern?, 34 J. Common Mkt. Stud. 29, 34 (1996).
125 Brian Barry offers a different description of "statism": "Statism is in essence a doctrine that endorses the status quo among states .... Brian Barry, Statism and Nationalism: A Cosmopolitan Critique, 41 Nomos 12, 25 (1999).
126 Krasner, supra note 124, at 20 (arguing that statism is the "fundamental norm of
Westphalian sovereignty"); see also Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (1948);
Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (1959); Barry, supra note 125, at 15 (describing
international realist scholars such as Morgenthau and Waltz as subscribing to statist
position).
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
lawgivers. 127 In law, the statist perspective appears in the legal positivism of John Austin, which posits an international system of states in
"hermetical isolation."'1 While the statist model has never described
the international system perfectly, 29 deviations from it generally are
resisted, though more and more unsuccessfully. 130 Unsurprisingly, nations invoke the statist model when they seek to repudiate foreign
interventions into their "internal" affairs, 131 but invoke other justifications for their actions when perpetrating such interventions.132
Statism must be distinguished from its sister concept of nationalism. Colloquially, the terms "nation" and "state" often are used interchangeably to refer to a country and its citizens. Scholars, however,
have long distinguished between the two, using "nation" to mean "a
community of people who share loyalties, civic allegiance, and national character,"133 and "state" to refer to a political entity that exer127 Brian Barry places the United Nations among those who often champion statism, as
evidenced in its reluctance to support secessionist movements. Barry, supra note 125, at
25-26.
M John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined 171 (Wilfrid E. Rumble ed.,
1995) (1832) (focusing on "independent political societ[ies]" as units in international
"law"); see also Myres S. McDougal et al., Theories About International Lair Prologue to
a Configurative Jurisprudence, in International Law Essays 43, 97 (Myres S. McDougal &
W. Michael Reisman eds., 1981).
129 See infra note 171 and accompanying text.
130 Anthony D'Amato, The Invasion of Panama Was a Lawful Response to Tyranny, 84
Am. J. Int'l. L. 516, 523-24 (1990) (characterizing U.S. invasions of Grenada and Panama
as affirming new customary international law rule permitting humanitarian intervention in
support of actual popular sovereignty); Lori Fisler Damrosch, Politics Across Borders:
Nonintervention and Nonforcible Influence Over Domestic Affairs, 83 Am. J. Int'l L 1, 2
(1989) (observing "[p]atterns of transnational political influence" in domestic political affairs despite purported norm of nonintervention).
131 See, e.g., D'Amato, supra note 130, at 518 (criticizing critics of United States invasion of Panama as employing "rhetoric of statism"). China exemplifies this phenomenon,
vigorously protesting as an intrusion upon its sovereignty any human-rights-based interference in its internal affairs. See Samuel S. Kim, Sovereignty in the Chinese Image of World
Order, in Essays in Honor of Wang l'ieya 425,428 (Ronald St. John McDonald ed., 1994)
(noting Chinese government's strong support for Westphalian notion of sovereignty); No
More of "Human Rights Above State Sovereignty," XINHUA News Agency, May 26,
1999, LEXIS, News Library, Xinhua File (reporting view of official Chinese nev agency
that "it is time now to put an end to the fallacy that human rights are above state sovereignty[, a fallacy] cooked up by the United States and its major allies").
M Peter Ford, Few Sacred Borders to New UN, Christian Sci. Monitor, Sept. 29, 1999,
at 1 (quoting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as saying: "This developing international norm in favor of intervention to protect civilians from wholesale slaughter is an
evolution that we should welcome"); Geoffrey Varley, France Defends Rwanda Intervention, Keen to Avoid Clashes, Agence Fr. Presse, July 5, 1994, LEXIS, News Group File
(quoting French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur's defense of use of French troops in
Rwanda on ground that mission was "strictly humanitarian").
133 Note, The Functionality of Citizenship, 110 Harv. L Rev. 1814, 1815 (1997). For
Ernest Renan, writing more than a century ago, the nation is "a spiritual principle, the
outcome of the profound complications of history." Ernest Renan, What is a Nation?, re-
[Vol. 76:1005
cises a high degree of territorial dominion and does not itself have any
politically superior entity above it. This distinction makes the yoking
together of the two words into "nation-state" (a linkage credited to
Hegel) 34 more meaningful-the linkage expresses the idea that the
natural political and geographical division of the world is based on the
lines of one nation per state. "Nationalism" thus has been defined as
the political movement seeking to ensure that "the state and nation
coincide."'1 35 But this is not the current way of the world. As Thomas
Franck observes, "today, almost no states are nations and hardly any
nations are states."'1 36 Diasporas exemplify this, representing a nation
that is no longer territorially limited by the political boundaries of the
state.
1. Application of the Statist Model to DiasporanLegal Questions
How would the statist model approach the legal claims of diasporas? How would a statist host government, for example, respond to a
diaspora's claim for recognition, dual citizenship, limited self-governance, pro-diaspora discrimination, petitioning, multicultural rights,
freedom of movement, liberal immigration, and representation in international lawmaking? We briefly consider each such claim in turn.
First, the statist model would disfavor the recognition of a transnational community, such as the diaspora, that did not order its affairs
according to state borders. Second, allowing people dual citizenship
would encroach upon the strict territorial ideal, as the dual citizen
would be subject to the commands of two sovereigns and would experience feelings of dual loyalty. Third, allowing certain areas of autonomy to domestic groups would violate the Westphalian state's
monopoly on prescriptive authority. With respect to the fourth category of claims, discrimination in favor of diaspora members, the statist
model would disfavor preferential treatment of other members of the
diaspora, and would instead encourage feelings of camaraderie exclusively with fellow citizens of the adopted country. Fifth, the statist
model would reject, as inconsistent with its demand for a singular 1oyprinted in Nation and Narration 8, 18 (Homi K. Bhabha ed., 1990). Compare Stalin's definition: "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the
basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." Joseph Stalin, The Nation, in Nationalism 18, 20 (John
Hutchinson & Anthony D. Smith eds., 1994).
134 Franck, supra note 28, at 7.
135 Will Kymlicka & Christine Straehle, Cosmopolitanism, Nation-States, and Minority
Nationalism: A Critical Review of Recent Literature, 7 Eur. J. Phil. 65, 66 (1999).
136 Franck, supra note 28, at 7; see also Walker Connor, A Nation Is a Nation, Is a State,
Is an Ethnic Group, Is a.... in Nationalism, supra note 133, at 36, 39 (observing that most
states in world are not true "nation-states").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
alty, petitions of domestic groups in favor of their homelands abroad.
Sixth, though the model could theoretically be said to be consistent
with multiculturalism, the one nation/one state paradigm associated
with the statist model favors assimilation. Seventh, the statist approach would respect the freedom of movement of the diaspora but
would disfavor the use of this freedom to maintain loyalties to foreign
lands. Eighth, the statist approach would impose restrictive immigration policies to protect its national character. Finally, the model
would reject the participation of nonstate actors such as diasporas in
international lawmaking.
Given its concern with granting a state exclusive dominion over
its territory, the statist model seeks to apply a state's law to transactions occurring within, or having an effect on, its territory. Accordingly, the unilateral approach in conflict-of-laws theory has much
appeal to statists. Under unilateralism, the court asks only "whether
the forum's law applies to the activity in question, without worrying
that another forum might also apply its law. ' 137 In this way, the territorial sovereignty of a state is not diminished by the possibility that a
court might conclude that another state's law might be better applied
to the dispute. Multilateralism, on the other hand, seeks to assign prescriptive competence to only one state in a multistate transaction, requiring a court to choose the law of the state with the strongest
connection to the dispute. Unilateral judicial decisions abound. The
most prominent recent example in United States jurisprudence is the
Supreme Court's decision in Hartford Fire Insurance Co. v. California.138 In Hartford, the Court upheld the application of the Sherman
Act against London reinsurers, despite the fact that British law permitted them to engage in the very acts that the Sherman Act prohibited, as the British government attested as amicus curiae in the
appeal. 139 Unilateral approaches to diaspora relations with the homeland and to each other will lead to similar conflicts between
sovereigns.
137 William S. Dodge, Extraterritoriality and Conflict-of-Laws Theory. An Argument
for Judicial Unilateralism, 39 Harv. Int'l L.J. 101, 104 (1998); see also Lea Brilmayer, Conflict of Laws 17-19 (1995) (contrasting unilateralist and multilateralist approaches in con-
flict of laws).
138
139
509 U.S. 764, 794-99 (1993).
Id. at 798-99.
[Vol. 76:1005
2. Statism and Dual Sovereignty
The central insight of the statist model came as early as the sixteenth century in Jean Bodin's account of sovereignty. 140 According
to Bodin, sovereignty was indivisible because logic required that it be
vested in a single individual or group.1 4 ' This notion of indivisibility
was later enshrined in the maxim, popular during the time of the
founding of American democracy, that "imperium in imperio [is]
justly deemed [a] solecism," that is, that a sovereign within a sovereign
is logically absurd.' 42 To avoid this absurdity, it was considered necessary to arrange international relations according to the rule of one
territory, one sovereign.
This underlying hostility to any possibility of dual sovereignty
leads to the statist model's hostility towards the possibility of loyalty
to two sovereigns. The United States, for example, requires all persons who are naturalized as U.S. citizens to take an oath renouncing
all allegiance to "any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty,"
though the United States does not enforce this oath. 143 The oath's
focus on the power exercised by foreign sovereigns is evident in the
requirement that an individual give up allegiance to foreign sovereigns, but not nongovernmental connections to her homeland144
The hostility towards dual loyalty has manifested itself in coercive, discriminatory action against diasporas. The experience of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II stands as a
clear example of this sad history. Justice Frank Murphy, dissenting in
Korematsu v. United States,
45
revealed the motives underlying the ex-
140 Thomas Pogge describes Bodin's work as one origin of what he calls the "dogma of
absolute sovereignty," but also finds antecedents in the writings of Aquinas, Dante, and
Marsilius. Thomas W. Pogge, Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty, 103 Ethics 48, 59 & n.20
(1992).
141 Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty: Four Chapters From the Six Books of the Commonwealth 92 (Julian H. Franklin ed., Cambridge Univ. Press 1992) (1583) ("For if sovereignty
is indivisible,.., how could it be shared by a prince, the nobles, and the people at the same
time?"); see also Julian H. Franklin, Sovereignty and the Mixed Constitution: Bodin and
His Critics, in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-1700, at 298, 298 (J.H.
Burns ed., 1991). Franklin criticizes Bodin for being "innocent of any notion of constitutional coordination of co-equal parts." Id. at 305. Bodin did not recognize the possibility
of separate domains of powers. Id.
142 Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, at 527-30
(1969).
144 Sanford Levinson, Constituting Communities Through Words That Bind: Reflections on Loyalty Oaths, 84 Mich. L. Rev. 1440, 1441 (1986) (quoting Professor Salvemini as
stating that "[y]ou are asked to sever your connections with the government of your former
country, not with the people and civilization of your former country").
145 323 U.S. 214 (1944) (upholding military order restricting Japanese Americans to internment camps).
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
clusion order by quoting directly from the Commanding General's Final Report on the internment of Japanese Americans: The General,
Justice Murphy writes, "refers to all individuals of Japanese descent as
'subversive,' as belonging to 'an enemy race' whose 'racial strains are
undiluted,' and as constituting 'over 112,000 potential enemies... at
large today' along the Pacific Coast. '1 46 The concern that Japanese
Americans would commit sabotage and espionage against the United
States to aid Japan justified, to the majority of the Court and to the
executive branch, their internment in desert camps and the dispossession of their homes and property. 47
Suspicion of dual loyalty still prevails. While the days of internment camps and the questioning of John F. Kennedy's loyalty due to
his Catholicism may seem like a distant memory, complaints about
dual loyalties remain a common feature of contemporary discourse.
Suspicion of dual loyalty is evident in the treatment of Asian Americans following unsubstantiated accusations that China funneled
money into American political campaigns, 48 and that American
scientists of Chinese descent spied on United States nuclear installations for China. 149
International law traditionally has sought to reduce the incidence
of dual nationality, one important instance of dual loyalty. As early as
1868, the United States began concluding bilateral treaties with European countries to define a single nationality for persons who might
146 Id. at 236 (Murphy, J., dissenting) (quoting final military report on Japanese
evacuation).
147 Hostility towards diasporas may arise not only because of concerns about dual loyalty, but because of antipathy based on race or ethnicity. Indeed, Justice Murphy de-
nounces the apparent racism of the government in its internment of Japanese Americans
on the West Coast while leaving most German Americans and Italian Americans free: He
wrote that internment "falls into the ugly abyss of racism" and noted differential treatment
between persons of German and Italian ancestry and those of Japanese ancestry. Id. at
233, 241 (Murphy, J., dissenting).
148 L. Ling-chi Wang, Beyond Identity and Racial Politics: Asian Americans and the
Campaign Fund-Raising Controversy, 5 Asian LJ. 329, 332 (1998) (characterizing Senate
inquiry into Chinese contributions to American political campaigns as attack on Asian
Americans).
149 See, e.g., Nick Anderson, Spy Scare Taints Labs' Atmosphere, Asian Americans Say,
L.A. Times, May 21, 1999, at A12 (reporting Chinese American lab worker's complaint
that he had been asked at work whether he had "dual loyalties"); Annie Nakao, Asian
Americans Fear Backlash, S.F. Examiner, May 26, 1999, 1999 WL 6973486 (citing Professor Bill Hing and Professor Frank Wu's concern that Cox Report on Chinese spying failed
to distinguish between Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals). According to a recent
survey, nearly one-third of Americans not of Chinese descent believe that Chinese Americans are more loyal to China than to the United States. Comm. of 100, Yankelovich Partners Survey of American Attitudes Towards Chinese Americans and Asian Americans 6
(April 2001), at http://www.committeelOO.orglamer-att/amer-att.pdf (last visited May 1,
2001).
[Vol. 76:1005
otherwise have double nationality. 150 In 1906, the United States
signed a convention with seventeen Central and South American
countries requiring that a naturalized person returning to the state of
his original nationality would be considered to have reassumed his
original citizenship and to have renounced the citizenship acquired
through naturalization. 151 The 1930 Hague Conference on the Codifi-
cation of International Law resulted in a Final Act which recommended that "[s]tates should apply the principle that the acquisition
of a foreign nationality through naturalisation involves the loss of the
previous nationality.' 152 In the late 1950s, the Soviet Union concluded a series of bilateral treaties with its fraternal states to reduce
cases of multiple nationality.
53
The Council of Europe adopted a
similar approach in the 1963 Convention of Reduction of Cases of
54
Multiple Nationality.
United States law exhibited hostility towards dual nationality for
a long time.155 "The moment a foreigner becomes naturalized his allegiance to his native country is severed forever," wrote the Secretary of
State in 1859.156 "He experiences a new political birth. 1 57 Even in
the midpart of the twentieth century, United States citizenship was
revoked for birthright citizens if they took certain actions that might
58
suggest that they were loyal to a foreign country.'
3. Statism and Assimilation
The statist model's central focus on the nation-state and its concomitant hostility towards dual loyalties drive it towards an assimila150 See, e.g., Treaty With the King of Prussia, Feb. 22, 1868, U.S.-Prussia, 15 Stat. 615,
615; see also Spiro, supra note 22, at 1435 n.98 (arguing that Article I of treaty strongly
implied that original nationality would be lost upon naturalization).
151 Convention Between the United States and Other Powers Establishing Status of Returning Naturalized Citizens, Aug. 13, 1906, art. I, 37 Stat. 1653, 1655.
152 Myres S. McDougal et al., Nationality and Human Rights: The Protection of the
Individual in External Arenas, 83 Yale L.J. 900, 931 (1974); see also Spiro, supra note 22, at
1435 n.98 (citing bilateral treaties).
153 McDougal et al., supra note 152, at 986.
154 Id. at 985.
155 In the latter half of the twentieth century, the United States came to accept dual
nationality. See infra notes 179-80 and accompanying text.
156 Spiro, supra note 22, at 1435.
157
Id.
Nationality Act of 1940, Pub. L. No. 76-853, § 401, 54 Stat. 1109 (1940). The acts
included: naturalizing in a foreign state, taking an oath of allegiance to another country,
participating in the armed services of another country where the individual had acquired
nationality, voting in the election of a foreign country, or working as a government employee in a foreign country where employment was limited to naturalized citizens. Id.
158
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
1037
tionist political ideology and assimilationist legal norms. 15 9 Statism
long has been associated with the often coercive assimilation of disparate groups living within the state's territory to create a single nation
from distinct tribes with different traditions, languages, worldviews,
and cultures. 160 Assimilationist strategies are, by definition, hostile to
diasporas, since diasporas are defined by the transnational community
161
they seek to maintain.
Immigrants who resist assimilation or who live double lives often
are thought to threaten the "perceived minimum order requirements
of the environing community."'
62
During the Congressional debates
on the Fifteenth Amendment, Senator George H. Williams of Oregon
denounced the proposed amendment because it could lead to sovereignty conflicts with respect to Chinese immigrants who were not assimilated into American society: "They are a people who ... will not
adopt our manners or customs and modes of life; they do not amalgamate with our people; they constitute a distinct and separate nationality, an imperium in imperio-Chinain the United States.... . 1 6 3
The immigrant's strong desire for acceptance through assimilation often results in her intentional rejection of ties to the homeland.
The immigrant, motivated by concern over potential accusations of
With respect to legal norms, for example, Kenji Yoshino has observed an assimilationist bias in American equal protection jurisprudence. Kenji Yoshino, Assimilationist
Bias in Equal Protection: The Visibility Presumption and the Case of "Don't Ask, Don't
Tell," 108 Yale L.J. 485, 487 (1998). Christopher Eisgruber argues that assimilation is a
constitutional value, one reconciling a commitment to pluralism with a commitment to
justice. Christopher L. Eisgruber, The Constitutional Value of Assimilation, 96 Colum. L
Rev. 87, 87-88 (1996).
160 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism 8-18 (1983) (describing roles of states in
preindustrial, agrarian societies).
161 James Clifford observes that "assimilationist national ideologies such as those of the
United States" produce "narratives [that] are designed to integrate immigrants, not people
in diasporas." Clifford, supra note 6, at 307.
162 W. Michael Reisman, Autonomy, Interdependence, and Responsibility, 103 Yale W.
401, 415 (1993) (worrying that "[mlinorities concerned with resisting assimilation and
maintaining their identity and group integrity.., will be the targets" of "national and
racist hysteria").
163 Alfred Avins, The Reconstruction Amendments' Debates 358 (1967) (presenting legislative history and debates in Congress on Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). The ability to assimilate has long been used to judge whether certain groups
should be accepted as part of American society. See Rosaldo, supra note 21, at 209
(describing American notion of "melting pot" as process that strips immigrants of their
cultures, enabling them to become American citizens); Kevin R. Johnson, "Melting Pot" or
"Ring of Fire"? Assimilation and the Mexican-American Experience, 85 Cal. L Rev. 1259,
1312 (1997) (stating that "infamous Chinese exclusion laws of the 1800s and the internment
of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II were rationalized, and upheld by the
Supreme Court, on the ground that Chinese and Japanese persons had failed to assimilate"); see also Johnson v. M'Intosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543,590 (1823) (describing Native
Americans as "fierce savages" for whom assimilation is impossible).
159
[Vol. 76:1005
disloyalty to her adopted country, may give up citizenship in her
homeland even if that country permits dual citizenship. Even more
perversely, homeland states might intentionally deny their diasporas
the possibility of dual citizenship because of the fear that their diasporas might then be accused of disloyalty to their adopted lands. Since
its issuance of the Resurgent India Bonds, 164 India recently revisited
the possibility of allowing its diaspora to maintain its Indian citizenship even when it takes on the citizenship of another country. 165
Some diasporan Indians spoke up against the idea, afraid that "if they
sought... dual citizenships, their loyalty to their countries of adoption
may become suspect."'1 66 This is reminiscent of the declaration by
"the American Council for Judaism, founded in 1943 but now moribund, that Jews are Jews in a religious sense only and any support
given to a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be an act of disloyalty
to their countries of residence."'1 67 The fear of being marked as dis-
loyal to their adopted country often has induced diaspora members to
assimilate and to reject any offer of dual nationality.
4. Critique of Statism
The traditional premise of international law-that nation-states
are sovereign over their territory-has been under attack from various quarters. 68 Perhaps the earliest breach in that construction of
164 See infra Part IV.A.
165 See Arvind Padmanabhan, Contribution of the Indian Diaspora Stretches Beyond
Business, India Abroad, Feb. 25, 2000, at 30, http://www.softlineweb.com/bin/KaStasGw.exe?k_a=5033m.l.searchwin.w (providing search engine that can find this article).
166 Lalit K. Jha, PIO Card Scheme Continues to Be a Nonstarter, India Abroad, Jan. 1,
1999, at 4, http://www.softlineweb.com/bin/KaStasGw.exek_a=5033m.l.searchwin.w (providing search engine that can find this article). India has not yet approved dual nationalities, though it has begun issuing "Persons of Indian Origin" (PIO) cards for one thousand
dollars each, allowing one, quite literally, to be a card-carrying member of the Indian diaspora. Centre Launches PIO Cards, The Statesman (India), March 31, 1999, LEXIS, Asia
Intelligence Wire File. The PIO card may presage other identification documents that proclaim an individual to be a recognized member of the diaspora of a particular country. Cf.
Barbara J. Merguerian, A Status for Diasporan Armenians?, Armenian Mirror-Spectator,
Sept. 19, 1999, http:llwww.armeniadiaspora.com/htms/remarks.html (describing suggestion
that Armenian government issue Armenian Identity Certificate to individuals of Armenian
descent). See generally John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State 158 (2000) (noting that "identification documents such as passports have
played a crucial role in modern states' efforts to generate and sustain their 'embrace' of
individuals").
167 The New Encyclopedia Britannica 69 (15th ed. 1989) (entry for "diaspora").
168 Criticism of traditional conceptions of sovereignty has become commonplace. Louis
Henkin suggests that we do away with the term as applied to states in their external relations, preferring instead terms describing various attributes of states, such as political independence, territorial integrity, and the right to be left alone. Louis Henkin, The Mythology
of Sovereignty, in Essays in Honor of Wang Tieya, supra note 131, at 351, 352-54. Jack
Rakove seeks to banish the term altogether because it is often used imperiously to aggran-
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
1039
sovereignty can be found in the law of war, which holds states accountable internationally even for actions committed within their own
borders. Through the trials following World War II at Nuremberg,
that law of war grew into a full-fledged human rights law. 169 A third
concession to foreign power developed through post-war international
regimes such as trade organizations. 170 While it is true, as Krasner
writes, that there was never an era in which nation-states had absolute
dominion over their territory, 17 1 the last century saw a higher degree
of legalization of intrusions into territorial sovereignty, as well as 7a
1
magnification of the number and breadth of such intrusions. 2
Bodin's doctrine of absolute territorial sovereignty "has been overtaken by the historical facts of the last two hundred years or so, which
show conclusively that what cannot work in theory works quite well in
practice."1 73
The Westphalian principle of an international system that recognizes only states as players in international relations came under assault, especially after World War II, as new nonstate actors such as
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and multilateral institutions
sought roles on the world stage. 174 The participation of NGOs and
multilateral institutions has become widely accepted in international
dize power and secure rhetorical advantage by entities claiming authority to do something
based on their "sovereignty." Jack N. Rakove, Making a Hash of Sovereignty, Part II, 3
Green Bag 2d 51-52 (1999). Rakove's complaint should not apply to use of the term in the
diaspora model since sovereignty's use as a trump is limited in that model.
169 See Harold Hongju Koh, Statement Before the Senate Commission on Foreign Relations (Oct. 7, 1998) (testimony of Harold Hongju Koh regarding his nomination as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor), 1998 WVL 180S9125.
According to Koh:
The modem-day international human rights movement rose from the ashes of
World War II, with the war crimes trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed fifty years ago this coming December. The international labor movement spurred the development of
universal human rights standards and their inclusion into global diplomatic
discourse.
Id. See also Fernando R. Tes6n, Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry Into Law and
Morality 155-57 (2d ed. 1997) (discussing Nuremberg trials' message that individuals are
entitled to fundamental human rights).
170 But see John 0. McGinnis & Mark L Movsesian, The World Trade Constitution, 114
Harv. L. Rev. 511, 528 (2000) (refuting "conventional wisdom" that world trade regime
necessarily poses threat to state sovereignty).
171 Krasner, supra note 122, at 150; Krasner, supra note 124, at 238 (noting that there
"has never been some ideal time during which all, or even most, political entities conformed with all of the characteristics that have been associated with sovereignty-territory,
control, recognition, and autonomy").
172 Cf. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples 27 (Harvard Univ. Press 1999) ("Since World
War II international law has become stricter.").
173 Pogge, supra note 140, at 59.
174 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society 38-40 (1977).
[Vol. 76:1005
lawmaking. 175 The demonstrations at the Ministerial Conference of
the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 show a public clamor
for additional nonstate actors to be involved in international
lawmaking.
176
The statist approach also has been undermined by the growing
acceptance of dual nationality in both international and municipal
law. The Council of Europe repealed its earlier prohibitions on dual
nationality by amending in 1993 the Convention on the Reduction of
Cases of Multiple Nationality. 177 Britain, Switzerland, Portugal, and
France now all permit dual nationality. 178 The law in the United
States, shaped by Supreme Court decisions that declared unconstitutional statutory provisions that denaturalized United States citizens
based on their activities abroad, 79 has come to accept fully the possibility of dual nationality. 180 And crucially, many homeland countries
of major diasporas are now permitting their diasporas to retain their
175 Id.
176 Protesters sought to include "labor groups, environmentalists, farmers, and other
workers from developing countries" in process of making rules for international trade. See
Robert A. Jordan, Battle in Seattle Sent a Message, Boston Globe, Dec. 7, 1999, at D4.
177 Second Protocol Amending the Convention on the Reduction of Cases of Multiple
Nationality and Military Obligations in Cases of Multiple Nationality, Feb. 2, 1993, paras.
5-7, Europ. T.S. No. 149 (amending Convention on the Reduction of Cases of Multiple
Nationality and Military Obligations in Cases of Multiple Nationality, May 6, 1963, art. 1,
Europ. T.S. No. 43). Franck, supra note 6, at 381-82, 382 n.108.
179 In Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964), the Court invalidated the 1952 Immigration Act's presumption that a naturalized United States citizen renounced her United
States citizenship if she resided in her country of origin for three consecutive years. The
Court held that this provision constituted an unconstitutional discrimination against naturalized citizens. Id. at 168-69. In Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), the Court overruled its earlier decision in Perez v. Browneli, 356 U.S. 44 (1958), and held that voting in a
foreign election could not deprive one of United States citizenship. Afroyim, 387 U.S. at
267-68.
Asked whether a person would lose United States citizenship if that person became
the Prime Minister of a foreign country, the State Department mustered only this noncommittal answer, using a triple negative: "'It has not been established that the act of serving
as Prime Minister of a foreign country is not necessarily inconsistent with American citizenship and would not automatically deprive the actor of U.S. citizenship."' Marian Nash
(Leich), Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law, 87
Am. J. Int'l L. 595, 599 (1993) (quoting letter written by Edward A. Betancourt, Chief,
East Asian and Pacific Division, Office of Citizens Consular Services). Despite the permissive United States law with respect to dual nationality, the State Department still maintains
in its official pronouncements that "'[t]he United States does not favor dual nationality as
a matter of policy, but does recognize its existence in individual cases."' Id. at 601, 604
(quoting United States State Department circular).
180 See Franck, supra note 6, at 378-79 (discussing erosion of U.S. prohibition on dual
citizenship, culminating in State Department's 1990 announcement acknowledging that
some U.S. nationals also have other citizenships); Spiro, supra note 22, at 1454-55 (describing State Department tolerance for dual nationality in wake of court decisions and amendments to Immigration and Nationality Act).
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
citizenship despite naturalization elsewhere.181 Italy, Turkey, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, for example, now allow
their diasporas to keep their homeland citizenship. 1 3 As Franck argues, "[t]he response of a legal system to a citizen's claim to 'dual
nationality' is an excellent indicator of that society's tolerance not
merely for multiple loyalty but for the right of individuals to choose
their affiliations." 183 International and national law's increasing acceptance of dual nationality-without any evident catastrophic consequences-weakens the validity of the statist claim to singular loyalties.
The statist model has no room for the dual nationalities, double
consciousness, or the plural identities of diasporas.184 It demands a
singular identity so as to conform to its one nation/one state paradigm.
It rejects the pluralism of diasporas, in favor of the homogenizing
force of assimilation. In this way, the statist model fails to recognize
the "bifocal'18 or "dispersed" identities of members of the diaspora.
Finally, the territorialist obsession with avoiding jurisdictional
conflict by drawing bright lines at borders fails to appreciate the reality that negotiating multiple and conflicting sovereignties is commonplace. Sanford Levinson argues that the claim that there can be only
one sovereign within a polity is undermined by the concept of a religious sovereign. 86 Loyalties too are multiple'8 and perhaps even proliferating. Franck notes that multiple loyalties have marked the
human condition for a long time:
Human beings for millennia have defined themselves in terms of
loyalty to more than one system of social and political organization:
as subjects of the emperor or king; communicants of a transnational
church; members of a family, clan and nation; and perhaps members
of an artisan or professional guild or of a secret order or society.
Historically, the eternal question-who am I?-has more often than
181 Spiro, supra note 22, at 1457.
182 Id.
184 See infra Part m.C.
185 Purnima Mankekar, Reflections on Diasporic Identities: A Prolegomenon to an
Analysis of Political Bifocality, 3 Diaspora 349,364 (1994) ("[A] notion of political bifocality enables us to subvert the binaries of homeland and diaspora.").
186
Levinson, supra note 144, at 1467 ("[A]nyone who takes (at least Western) religion
seriously poses an alternative sovereign against the claims of the State, however much the
claims are dissipated by doctrines like the Talmudic injunction to follow the local law or by
Christian doctrines about God and Caesar.").
187 Id. at 1468 ("All political states... face the problem of multiple loyalties of their
citizenry, this is the price of a pluralist culture. Some of the time the competing loyalty is
to other political entities; on other occasions, though, the competitors are other institutions
within the society, whether family or religious community.").
[Vol. 76:1005
not been answered in terms of multiple external references, to
which loyalty was felt to be owed. 188
Where the statist model organizes loyalties in a clear hierarchy
and admits no conflict of loyalties, the diaspora model accepts multiple, even sometimes conflicting, loyalties as a condition of our contemporary society.
Recognizing diasporas suggests yet another compromise to the
traditional principle of territorial sovereignty.1 89 Diasporan individuals often seek to retain ties to the homeland and to each other that
might jeopardize their relations with their new territorial sovereign.
Diasporas, by their very nature, reject the statist insistence on a singular loyalty. The diaspora model described below suggests that, if
diasporan individuals maintain ties with their homeland, it may be appropriate to allow them to choose the law of their homeland to govern
those ties-even where those ties involve events in the territory of the
diaspora's new, adopted country, 190 but only so long as such events do
not violate the public law of the adopted country.1 91
B. The Cosmopolitan Model
An alternative approach to statism would deny a primary commitment to any one country or any two countries. One could say instead, "I am a citizen of the world."'9 Cosmopolitan theories share
three common elements. First, individualism-the belief that the ultimate unit of value is the individual human being, not family or ethnic
group. Second, equality-the belief that no categories of individuals
have more or less moral weight. Third, universality-the belief that
these characteristics apply to all human beings. 193 The legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron has described the "cosmopolitan" person as one
who essentially rejects borders altogether, one who "refuses to think
of himself as defined by his location or his ancestry or his citizenship
or his language."'1 94 The polar opposite of statists, cosmopolitans deny
Franck, supra note 6, at 370.
As one scholar describes, "the lived history of diasporas challenges the everyday
boundaries of international law's conceptual maps." Vasuki Nesiah, Territorial Sovereignty
in ICJ Jurisprudence, 92 ASIL Proc. 376, 377 (1998).
190 See infra Part IV.D; see also infra notes 260-65 and accompanying text.
191 See infra Part IV.D; see also infra note 261.
192 Scholars including Immanuel Kant have referred to such a person as a Weltblrgera citizen of the world. Franck, supra note 6, at 376.
193 Barry, supra note 125, at 35-36. Barry's delineation tracks Pogge, though Pogge uses
slightly different terminology: individualism, universality, and generality. Pogge, supra
note 140, at 48.
194 Jeremy Waldron, Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative, 25 U. Mich.
J.L. Reform 751, 754 (1992).
188
189
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
that the state is a crucial component of identity, preferring to describe
membership in a polity as incidental1 95 and certainly "morally irrelevant. 1 96 Waldron puts it colorfully: The cosmopolitan does not feel
the loss or compromise of any essential identity "when he learns Spanish, eats Chinese, wears clothes made in Korea, listens to arias by
Verdi sung by a Maori princess on Japanese equipment, follows
19 7
Ukrainian politics, and practices Buddhist meditation techniques."
Such a person "is a creature of modernity, conscious of living in a
mixed-up world and having a mixed-up self."' 9 8
Being a world citizen does not, however, mean that one wishes to
be a subject of a world government or to do away with states entirely. 19 9 Cosmopolitans generally disfavor a world sovereign, concerned that such an entity might, in Kant's words, become a "universal
monarchy."' 2 0 Cosmopolitanism can be seen as a "moral stance"
without "institutional nostrum," 20 1 except perhaps an abiding suspicion of the strongly statist solutions.
The force of cosmopolitanism can be felt in its call for serious
efforts to redistribute wealth to the poorer parts of the world. The
cosmopolitan argues that the "demands of global justice include various positive actions aimed at protecting the vital interests of everyone,
regardless of their location, nationality, or citizenship." 202 While cosmopolitans might permit a greater concern for the local (for example,
for one's own family or one's own country) than for the foreign, such
greater concern could be justified not because "the local is better per
se, but rather that this is the only sensible way to do good."2 0 3 Thus,
Barry, supra note 125, at 35.
Martha Nussbaum, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, Boston Rev., Oct.Nov. 1994,
at 3, 3.
197 Waldron, supra note 194, at 754.
195
196
198
Id.
199 See, e.g., Pogge, supra note 140, at 63 ("While a world state could lead to significant
progress in terms of peace and economic justice, it also poses significant risks of
oppression.").
200 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace 155 (M. Campbell Smith trans., George Allen &
Unwin Ltd. 1st. ed. 1903) (1795). See also Thomas Mertens, Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship: Kant Against Habermas, 4 Eur. J. Phil. 328, 330 (1996) (describing Kant's concern
about world government); Martha C. Nussbaum, Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism, 5 J.Pol.
Phil. 1, 6-9 (1997) (discussing influence of Stoic cosmopolitanism on Kant).
201
Barry, supra note 125, at 36; cf. Jones, supra note 113, at 228 (noting two branches of
cosmopolitanism: moral and institutional).
202 Jones, supra note 113, at 2; see also Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations 136-43 (1979) (arguing for redistribution of natural resources for maximum societal benefit). But see Thomas W. Pogge, Realizing Rawls 250-53, 263-65 (1989)
(critiquing Beitz's redistribution theory).
203 Martha C. Nussbaum, Reply, in For Love of Country 131, 135-36 (Joshua Cohen ed.,
1996).
[Vol. 76:1005
the perfect cosmopolitan bumper sticker: "Think globally, act
locally."
Cosmopolitan thought in Western philosophy can be traced back
to Diogenes the Cynic, who declared himself "a citizen of the world,"
and to the Stoics, who further developed the concept of the kosmou
polites (world citizen).20 4 Kant follows the Stoic elaboration of cos-
mopolitanism in Perpetual Peace.20 5 The end of the Cold War has
seen a revival of interest in cosmopolitanism. 20 6 It is no coincidence
that the year 1999 saw the publication of two cosmopolitan-themed
books both entitled "Global Justice";207 the concern with justice at a
global level becomes more acceptable when the world is not divided
between two warring camps.
Contemporary cosmopolitan theorists often rest their theory on
an application of John Rawls's procedural approach to devising just
institutions.208 As applied by cosmopolitans, the Rawlsian approach
would begin with an original position where the fair rules for world
society are to be devised. 209 Denied knowledge of the country into
which one is to be born (which is, after all, "an accident of birth"), 210
the participants in this deliberation would choose to diminish the importance of one's country to one's flourishing, mindful that any of
them might land in an impoverished or otherwise unlucky country;
they would accordingly choose global commitment (cosmopolitanism)
over national commitment (statism).211
204 Nussbaum, supra note 196, at 4 (tracing Stoic concept of world citizen); Nussbaum,
supra note 200, at 4 & n.11, 5 (describing influence of Stoic cosmopolitanism on Kant's
political writing).
205 See Kant, supra note 200; see also Nussbaum, supra note 200, at 4.
206 Cf. Samuel Scheffler, Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism, 11 Utilitas 255, 255 & n.1
(1999) (noting "resurgence of interest in the idea of cosmopolitanism" and citing recent
works).
207 Jones, supra note 113; see also Barry, supra note 125.
208 Pogge, supra note 202, at 240. Rawls's original theory applies only within a
predefined society, presumably determined by the boundaries of the nation-state.
Kymlicka & Straehle, supra note 135, at 65.
209 Rawls's own internationalization of his theory of justice can be found in a recent
book. Rawls, supra note 172. Rawls proposes two original positions, the first being among
members of a particular society wherein the internal rules of that society are devised, and
the second being among representatives of different societies (peoples) wherein the laws
governing the relations among societies are devised. Id. at 30-35.
210 Nussbaum, supra note 203, at 133 (arguing that factors of birth, such as nationality,
ethnicity, and gender, "should not be taken to be a determinant of moral worth"); see also
Nussbaum, supra note 200, at 7 (attributing to Stoic cosmopolitans idea that one's local or
national identity is less important than one's identity as world citizen).
211 This is a simplified version of the line of reasoning offered by a number of Rawlsian
cosmopolitan scholars. See, e.g., Beitz, supra note 202, at 127-36 (drawing on Rawlsian
view of distributive justice to argue that persons of diverse citizenship have obligation to
reduce global distributive inequalities); Pogge, supra note 202, at 240-80 (offering Rawlsian
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DIASPORA BONDS
An alternative path to cosmopolitanism can be found in
Bentham's utilitarianism, 212 which Brian Barry calls the "simplest
form of cosmopolitanism, since it says that we weigh the interests of
everybody on the same scale ... .,,213 Thus, the law and economics
school, which rests in very large part on a utilitarian philosophy, has a
strong cosmopolitan strain. Economists are the strongest proponents
of free trade and the free movement of capital and labor-a strongly
cosmopolitan view. Indeed, Amartya Sen describes Adam Smith as a
cosmopolitan.2 1 4 Generally, however, economists often have not
owned up to the cosmopolitan nature of their underlying philosophy,
preferring instead to focus on the mutual benefits of free movement of
capital, labor, and goods for all of the states involved.2 15 While many
economists might limit their social welfare functions only to the members of a particular polity, such a restriction finds no basis in the underlying utilitarianism of neoclassical economics and rests instead on
some other political theory.
1.
Application of the Cosmopolitan Model to DiasporanLegal
Questions
The relationship between cosmopolitanism and diaspora is complex. Cosmopolitans are among the greatest champions of multiculturalism and diversity, finding value in cultures throughout the
world.2 16 Moreover, cosmopolitans favor individual moral commitments that transcend national borders. Yet cosmopolitans would be
conception of global justice in which advantaged global participants share responsibility for
global order); Barry, supra note 125, at 35-36 (noting that Rawsian theory of justice requires "commit[ment] to universal civil and political rights and the redistribution of material resources for the benefit of those with the least, wherever on earth they may be
living").
212 See Jones, supra note 113, at 46-48.
213 Barry, supra note 125, at 36; Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation 2-3 (Hafner Publishing 1948) (1789) (describing principle of
utility).
214 Amartya Sen, Humanity and Citizenship, in For Love of Country, supra note 203, at
111, 113. See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments 229 (D.D. Raphael & A.L
Macfie eds., Clarendon Press 1976) (1759) ("[E]ach nation ought, not only to endeavour
itself to excel, but from the love of mankind, to promote [improvements of the world],
instead of obstructing the excellence of its neighbors."). Smith expressed this cosmopolitanism in his policy prescriptions, for example, in his critique of mercantilism, a policy that
focused on national economic development. Hobsbawvm, supra note 72, at 26.
215 Barry observes more generally that "utilitarians have been remarkably unforthcoming about the international implications of the doctrine." Barry, supra note 125, at 36.
216 See Scheffier, supra note 206, at 257 (describing cosmopolitan view of culture as one
that celebrates "people's remarkable capacity to forge new identities using material from
diverse cultural sources"). This reveling in diversity also is evidenced in Waldron's quote
about an eclectic cosmopolitan. See supra text accompanying note 194.
[Vol. 76:1005
skeptical of the patriotism of the diaspora either to its homeland or its
adopted land.
2 17
Cosmopolitanism would approach the legal claims of diasporas
as follows. First, diasporas would not be recognized because they represent the type of historical, ethnic, and national affiliation above
which cosmopolitans seek to rise. Second, cosmopolitans would dislike the concern for two states that dual citizenship entails, but might
allow it as a step towards a true world citizenship. Third, since cosmopolitans are not beholden to the state, they would permit voluntary,
transnational self-regulated civic associations, though again they
would disfavor diasporan associations based on history and ethnicity.
Fourth, cosmopolitans would reject discrimination in favor of diaspora
members, again because of the unenlightened basis for such discrimination. Fifth, the cosmopolitanism model would disfavor diaspora petitions on behalf of their homeland, again because of the historical and
ethnic ties to states that such petitions would evince. Sixth, as
Waldron demonstrates,2 1 8 multiculturalism, at least when defined as
the acceptance of different cultural forms, is welcomed by cosmopolitans, though cosmopolitanism is often critical of arguments for
government-sponsored cultural survival. Seventh, cosmopolitanism,
having little tolerance for notions of ethnic or cultural purity, would
support the freedom of movement of the diaspora. Eighth, cosmopolitans reject the notion of a particular "people," and thus have no
legitimate basis for denying anyone entry into a country. Finally, cosmopolitans would disfavor the participation of diasporas in international lawmaking, again because diasporas are based on ethnicity and
history.
2.
Critique of the Cosmopolitan Model
The cosmopolitan model, while recognizing the possibility of a
non-national identity, dissolves the multirootedness of diasporas into
a global identity.2 1 9 It fails to capture what is important to diasporas:
The powerful pull of loyalty exerted by the imagined nation demonstrates that, even in the age of science, a loyalty system based on
myths of shared history and kinship has a capacity to endure that
See supra Part II.
See supra note 194 and accompanying text.
Bruce Ackerman makes plain his rejection of nationality: "If I were a European
right now, I hope I would have the guts to stand up for rootless cosmopolitanism: forget
this nationalistic claptrap, and let us build a world worthy of free and equal human beings."
Bruce Ackerman, Rooted Cosmopolitanism, 104 Ethics 516, 534 (1994). But even
Ackerman retreats from this ideal, allowing instead that he is a "rooted cosmopolitan,"
faithful to the American Constitution. Id. at 535.
217
218
219
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
may be the envy of a state with the most liberal civil society and
patriotic citizenry. 220
Cosmopolitanism is less a theory about who we are than about
who we ought to be.221 But its aspirations for a Weltbiarger, a citizen
of the world, premised on an internationalization of Rawls's theory of
justice,' are subject to the same criticism as has been leveled against
Rawls domestically: The image of the self removes the aspects that
make the self special.2
Specifically, the view of a person detached
from her nation-state denies the attachments of the person to the na-
tion-state. 224 Nussbaum herself concedes that "cosmopolitanism
seems to have a hard time gripping the imagination." 22 Perhaps a
moral philosophy need not seek to inspire or reflect what individuals
find important in life. But a philosophy that ignores both of these
goals will find it difficult to establish itself as the basis for a new world
order.
When Waldron claims that the cosmopolitan "learns Spanish, eats
Chinese, wears clothes made in Korea," one recalls a popular Hindi
Franck, supra note 6, at 374.
Brian Barry seems to recognize this, conceding that it is "not easy to tell" how well
cosmopolitanism resonates with the publics of western countries. Barry, supra note 125, at
35. But it cannot be predicted with certainty that cosmopolitanism will never gain widespread popularity. Many more of us may be willing sometime in the future to shed our
national garb in favor of a global identity. The creation of the European Union has led to
a sense of pan-European citizenship, demonstrating the dynamic nature of our self-identification with a larger community. See, e.g., Roger Cohen, A European Identity NationState Losing Ground, N.Y. Times, Jan. 14,2000, at A3 (quoting young person as saying, "I
used to think of myself as German. Now I feel a little European, too").
= Barry, supra note 125, at 36.
223 See Michael J. Sandel, America's Search for a New Public Philosophy, Atlantic
Monthly, Mar. 1996, at 57, 70 (arguing that "liberal conception of citizens as freely choosing, independent selves" fails to acknowledge "our identities as members of families, peoples, cultures, or traditions"). Bruce Ackerman ridicules Sandel's criticism: "If,
as the
trendy cant assures us, our very identities as persons are constituted by the local practices
in which we find ourselves, the particular evils rooted in our particular communities are
irretrievably rooted in our very souls as well." Ackerman, supra note 219, at 534.
224 A cosmopolitanism founded on utilitarianism rather than Rawis's liberal egalitarianism similarly would prove too demanding on individuals. It would impose a mandate for
global distributive justice on individuals who would often prefer more parochial social welfare as the objective function to be maximized by society.
225 Nussbaum, supra note 196, at 6. One scholar objects to the "thinness of cosmopolitanism" and suggests that "global citizenship demands of its patriots levels of abstraction
and disembodiment most women and men will be unable or unwilling to muster, at least in
the first instance." Benjamin R Barber, Constitutional Faith, in For Love of Country,
supra note 203, at 30, 33-34. Nussbaum returns to this issue in a later article, conceding
that cosmopolitanism may be "less colorful" than "tradition, identity and group membership" but observing that the Stoics found the cosmopolitan concern with every individual
"ultimately more beautiful." Nussbaum, supra note 200, at 8.
220
221
[Vol. 76:1005
song recited by Salman Rushdie's narrator, "Angel Gibreel," as he
falls from the heavens in The Satanic Verses226 (translated roughly):
Mera joota hai Japan
(0, my shoes are Japanese)
Y6 patloon Inglistan
(These trousers English, if you please)
Sar pd lal topi Rusi-
(On my head, red Russian hat- 22 7
(My heart's Indian for all that.)
Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani
The singer feels exactly the opposite of Waldron's cosmopolitan;
the singer's foreign garb does not diminish his feeling of Indianness.
International interaction does not necessarily make one an internationalist. Ling-chi Wang's poetic description of the different approaches that overseas Chinese have taken to their roots serves as a
reminder that there are a multiplicity of personal responses to such
interaction. 228 Some people may, for example, identify strongly as
members of a diaspora, with the shared transnational community that
that entails, while others may identify with a particular state or as citizens of the world.
C. The DiasporaModel
1. Articulating the DiasporaModel
In a world that is increasingly diasporan, full of crisscrossing loyalties, transborder mobility, multinational political states, and transnational communities, neither the statist nor the cosmopolitan paradigm
fits. 22 9 Diasporas require a reconceptualization of the nation-state
and the international system. They challenge both the Westphalian
cartography of territorially defined sovereigns and the cosmopolitan
utopia of a united mankind.
The diaspora model begins with the recognition that diasporas
exemplify the contemporary condition. Corporations too have become increasingly multinational, with their ownership and operations
dispersed through the world.230 Labor and capital, seeking their highSalman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses 5 (1988).
Id. at 5. The translation is given by Rushdie. Salman Rushdie, Imaginary
Homelands (1982), reprinted in Imaginary Homelands: Essays in Criticism 1981-1991, at
11 (1991).
228 See supra note 63-69 and accompanying text. It is interesting that Ling-chi Wang's
typology omits a description of Waldron's type of cosmopolitan. See id.
229 The statist conception of the world as neatly divided into separate communities is
clearly outmoded (if it was ever accurate at all). As one observer of the migration from
Aguililla, Mexico to Redwood City, California points out, "[i]t has become inadequate to
see Aguillan migration as a movement between distinct communities, understood as the
loci of distinct sets of social relationships." Roger Rouse, Mexican Migration and the Social Space of Postmodemism, 1 Diaspora 8, 13 (1991).
230 See, e.g., supra note 1 (describing China.com).
226
227
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
est valued use, move with fewer legal and technological barriers across
states. Additionally, information has become widely disseminated, its
passage sped through the Internet, resulting in the creation of virtual
transnational communities. 31 The hallmarks of a globalized world
are hybridity, intermingling, and multiple allegiances. But despite this
intermingling, most people have not sloughed off their nationalist skin
in favor of an evolved cosmopolitanism. Rather, the hybridity resulting from globalization often manifests itself in individuals who subscribe to multiple nationalisms 2 2 or a transnationalism. Multiple
nationalisms and transnationalism become possible because "the nationalist genie, never perfectly contained in the bottle of the territorial
state, is now itself diasporic. ' ' 233 The diaspora model does not seek to
dismantle the nation-state, but rather to rearticulate it as a multinational state permitting the voluntary transnational associations of its
people. Furthermore, the model seeks to enfranchise diasporas as
recognized legal subjects in the transnational legal processP4
The lived experience of diasporas demonstrates the possibility of
negotiating such divided feelings in a way that allows diasporas to contribute to their homelands and adopted lands simultaneouslyZ33
Moreover, it demonstrates the possibility of a transnational community built on individual voluntary commitments. Increasingly, we see
the emergence of a transnational civic republicanism, with the diaspora taking an active part in shaping the future direction of its homeland. A globalized world requires a new paradigm of the relationship
of the citizen to the state. The diaspora model proposes that we view
that relationship as complicated and dynamic. The model would permit individuals to construct national and transnational communities of
their own choosing. In this way, then, the diaspora model rejects the
unitary ideology of statism in favor of an understanding of the state
that respects the possibility of plural commitments and loyalties. And
instead of requiring us to refashion ourselves, first and foremost, as
world citizens, the diaspora model offers an internationalism that reSee supra note 94 and accompanying text.
Mudimbe & Engel, supra note 17, at 4 ("Members of diasporas define themselves in
terms of at least a double identity, thus bracketing the unconditional fidelity associated
with citizenship in a particular nation-state. They see themselves as being, for instance,
both African and American, French and Palestinian, Jewish and Spanish.").
233 Appadurai, supra note 94, at 160.
234 The transnational legal process is the way in which public and private actors interact
"to make, interpret, enforce, and ultimately, internalize rules of transnational law."
Harold Hongju Koh, Transnational Legal Process, 75 Neb. L Rev. 181, 183-84 (1996).
235 T6161yan pleads: "[A]t its best the diaspora is an example, for both the homeland's
and hosfland's nation-states, of the possibility of living, even thriving in the regimes of
multiplicity which are increasingly the global condition, and a proper version of which
231
232
diasporas may help to construct, given half a chance." T61lyan, supra note 44, at 7.
[Vol. 76:1005
spects patriotic feelings and individual attachments to country and
community-with the hope that such attachments might bind the
world closer together.
Thus, the diaspora model complicates the international system,
replacing the clean demarcations of statism with an acceptance of
overlapping sovereignties. 23 6 As the communitarian philosopher
Michael Sandel observes, "[t]he most promising alternative to the sovereign state is not a cosmopolitan community based on the solidarity
of humankind but a multiplicity of communities and political bodiessome more extensive than nations and some less-among which sovereignty is diffused. '2 3 7 This approach does not mean doing away
with states, but rather denying their claim to the exclusive allegiance
of their residents. The diaspora model thus offers an intermediate
point between the exclusivity of statism and the universality of
cosmopolitanism.
With some optimism, the model locates in diasporas the possibility of building bridges across the world, between rich and poor countries and between liberal and illiberal societies. Diasporas offer the
possibility of uniting the world through a web of personal and community loyalties, while international capital flows and international trade
create a web of international economic dependencies. This web of
personal loyalties is spun through the dual loyalties of individuals in
diaspora. The relationship of individual to state, conceived by
Westphalians as a one-to-one relationship and by cosmopolitans as
ethically irrelevant, can be reimagined to promote both the ideal of
authenticity and the possibility of economic development.
2.
Recognizing Diaspora
The claim that diaspora has meaning in both municipal and international law is, at its core, a claim for recognition. Charles Taylor, in
his influential essay on the "politics of recognition," describes the efforts by subaltern groups to obtain recognition from the world at
large, and the importance of this recognition to their self-constitu23
tion. 8
Taylor begins by observing that the collapse of the traditional
social hierarchies has led to a shift from "honor" to "dignity" as the
basis for describing an individual's relationship to society at large. 23 9
236 Indeed, one could argue that the term "international system" is a misnomer, that the
term "interstate system" would have been more true to the Westphalian paradigm. The
diaspora model moves a little bit in the direction of a true international system.
237 Sandel, supra note 223, at 73-74.
238 Taylor, supra note 28.
239 Note, for example, the New Haven School of International Law's concern with individual dignity as the central value of both international and municipal law. Richard A.
October 20011
DIASPORA BONDS
Then, he reports that authenticity-the idea that there is a "way of
being human that is my way" 240-has become an ideal to be sought
after, and which the social order should help one achieve. 2 4 ' Recog-
nizing that our identities are shaped dialogically-that is, in dialogue
with others-the only way to develop authentically is if others recognize us for who we are. 2 42 This is the politics of recognition-the need
for society to recognize what makes us distinct so that each of us can
understand this in ourselves.
The difficulty in Taylor's account is that societal recognition can
take the form of a stereotyping essentialism rather than a true dialoit
gism.243 Society might tightly script identity such that the identity244
recognizes becomes the controlling identification of the individual.
Thus, a true politics of recognition must allow for dialogue by being
loose enough to allow the individual to reject any "recognized" way of
being. 245
The logic of the politics of recognition reaches beyond multiculturalism (and beyond nationalism, ethnic politics and feminism, where
it has also been applied) to diaspora. If, as Taylor describes, our identity is partially shaped by recognition or its absence, if authenticity is a
central virtue, and if membership in diaspora is an important component of our authentic selves, then we should seek to recognize
diaspora. 246
Falk, Casting the Spell: The New Haven School of International Law, 104 Yale LJ. 1991,
1991 (1995) (book review) (characterizing New Haven School of International Law as hayig "promotion of human dignity" as its "normative rudder").
240 Taylor, supra note 28, at 30.
241
242
Id. at 33-34.
This is reminiscent of Du Bois's African American looking at himself through the
eyes of others. See infra text accompanying note 251.
243 See Appiah, supra note 53, at 155 (discussing essentialism in questions of authenticity). On essentialism generally, see, for example, Edward NV. Said's observation that Western portrayals of East depict Eastern culture as monolithic and diametrically opposed to
Western culture. Edward NV. Said, Orientalism 3-5 (2d ed. 1995).
244 K. Anthony Appiah, Race, Culture, Identity. Misunderstood Connections, in Color
Conscious: The Political Morality of Race 30, 99 (1996).
245 Especially helpful here is the LatCrit injunction that we "experience one another as
multidimensional people who also have many things in common." Alice G. Abreu, Lessons from LatCrit: Insiders and Outsiders, All at the Same Time, 53 U. Miami L Rev. 787,
810 (1999).
246 Michael Walzer would deny such recognition, claiming that immigrants to societies
like the United States have, in coming to such a society, already chosen to receive no
special protections for the culture they had in their homeland. See Michael Wazer, Comment, in Multiculturalism, supra note 28, at 99, 101. Arguing that the doctrine of the
United States is not to support preservation of immigrants' ways of life, Wazer claims
immigrants intended "to take cultural risks when they came here and to leave the certainties of their old ways of life behind." Id. at 103. He allows that "[n]o doubt, there are
moments of sorrow and regret whet. they realize how much they have left behind." Id.
But the fact that immigrants to this country may have come knowing that immigration
1052
[Vol. 76:1005
Diasporas themselves often are leery of recognition. 247 Beleaguered by nativists, 248 diasporas often seek to distance themselves
from any public actions that may suggest a loyalty to the homeland.
They may be careful not to draw attention to their relations among
themselves and with their homelands. At the heart of the diaspora
model is an embrace-instead of the usual pushing aside-of the dual
loyalty that, in fact, animates many members of diasporas. 2 49 That
dual loyalty stems in part from what W.E.B. Du Bois has called
25
' 0
"double consciousness.
3.
Doubling Consciousness
[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted
with second-sight in this American world,-a world which yields
him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself
through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self
through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a
world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels
his twoness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose
dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. 5 1
W.E.B. Du Bois's famous description of the African American
looking at himself through the eyes of others and feeling a "double
consciousness" has much resonance with the experience of diaspora.
As Salman Rushdie describes it, "[o]ur identity is at once plural and
partial. ' ' 252 He continues, "[s]ometimes we feel that we straddle two
might require them to give up their culture or their connection to their homeland does not
demonstrate that it is what the immigrants wanted, nor does it justify that loss. They might
have understood that as the price of entry and then decided to pay that price, but that does
not mean it was a price they wanted to pay. Walzer conflates willingness to forgo one's
cultural identity with a desire to forgo that identity. They might have come despite the
possibility of a loss of identity.
247 See supra text accompanying notes 165-67.
248 See Kevin R. Johnson, Fear of an "Alien Nation": Race, Immigration, and Immigrants, Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev., Summer 1996, at 111 (identifying recurrent periods of antiimmigrant sentiment in United States history).
249 Many members of a dispersed community may no longer feel an allegiance to the
homeland, though they may still have affection for it. United States Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, born in the former Czechoslovakia, reacted to a suggestion that she
seek the Czech presidency by asserting that her allegiance to the United States was singular, despite her love for her homeland. Eggs, Accolades Greet Albright in Czech Republic,
at http://www.cnn.com20OIWORLD/europe/03/06/czech.havel.albright/index.html (Mar.
6, 2000) (quoting Albright as saying, "I will always love the place where I was born, but my
allegiance is to the United States").
250 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk 5 (Penguin Books 1989) (1903).
251 Id.
252 Rushdie, supra note 227, at 15.
October 20011
DIASPORA BONDS
cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.'" a 3 The diaspora model recognizes this straddling and falling and accepts double
consciousness as emblematic of a globalized age.
Some writers have insisted that the hyphenated status of diasporas (homeland-adopted land) is not a halfway status as a refugee in
some demilitarized zone between two dominant societies, but rather
an enriched status where the person can claim full membership in two
communities. Moreover, many have also found in diaspora a source
of strength, knowledge, and wisdom. as 4 In Japan, it is popular to refer
to bicultural and biracial people using the English word "double" to
indicate that the person has the advantage of both backgrounds,
rather than the disadvantage of receiving only a diluted half of
each.255 The creation of identity is not a zero-sum game, with the addition of one culture requiring the deletion of another. Even while
recognizing the difficulty of being black in America, Du Bois makes a
similar point: He declares that the "American Negro" would "not
bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows
that Negro blood has a message for the world."2a 6 Du Bois's "American Negro" does not seek to whitewash himself, but recognizes, however painfully, the potential in a bifurcated identity. In the same vein,
the "leGilroy concludes his book on "The Black Atlantic" by noting
a7
intermixture."2
and
hybridity,
mutation,
of
value
gitimate
4. The Diaspora Model's Approach to Diaspora Legal Claims
At the start, it is important to note that the diaspora model does
not by any means imply an uncritical capitulation to the demands of
diasporas. Rather it approaches such demands with respect, understanding their basis in aspects of individual identity.
Recognition. Without question, both homeland and hostland
states would recognize diasporas, with homeland states seeking to attract the capital and expertise of the diaspora, and hostland states respecting the transnational ties of the diaspora5 8
253 Id.
254 See, e.g., Steven Vertovec, Three Meanings of "Diaspora," Exemplified Among
South Asian Religions, 6 Diaspora 277, 282 (1997) (stating that "instead of being represented as a kind of schizophrenic deficit, such multiplicity is being redefined by diasporic
individuals as a source of adaptive strength" (emphasis in original)).
255 Jane Singer, Japan's Singular "Doubles," Japan Q., AprJJune 2000, at 77.
256 Du Bois, supra note 250, at 5.
257 Gilroy, supra note 84, at 223.
258 In Northern Ireland, for example, the Belfast Agreement of 1998, approved overwhelmingly in a Northern Ireland referendum in May 1998, recognizes the Irish diaspora
for the first time but "to no particular legal effect." Duncan Shipley-Dalton, The Belfast
Agreement, 22 Fordham Int'l LJ. 1320, 1331 (1999). In the 1980s, Greece, ith its long
1054
[Vol. 76:1005
Dual Citizenship. Since members of diasporas often seek to
maintain the formal tie of citizenship with both their homelands and
adopted lands, each of the two relevant states should hold out the
possibility of dual citizenship. Thus, the homeland would permit
members of its diaspora to retain their citizenship when they nationalize abroad, and the adopted land would not require members of a
diaspora to relinquish their homeland citizenship. 259 Each country
would accept the dual loyalties that accompanied these dual nationalities as natural and respectable. Moreover, each country would accept
the possibility of dual loyalties even if they are not expressed formally
in dual citizenship.
Self-Governance; Choice of Law. The diaspora model would
permit some minimum level of self-governance to the diaspora. Such
self-governance would arise through voluntary associations of
diasporan individuals with explicit choices of law to govern those associations.2 60 It would distinguish between those parts of the law that
deal with public order and those that deal with private, individual order. The diaspora model would say that the private order should be
the domain of personal choice, and that the diaspora should be able to
choose that domain to be governed by the law of either its homeland
or its adopted land.2 61 This is generally consistent with the traditional
view that certain laws are subject to private ordering, while others are
history of diaspora, established a government agency to plan and implement policy regarding diasporan Hellenes; today, the agency publishes a manual designed to answer the questions of Greeks living abroad. See Gen. Secretariat for Greeks Abroad, Hellenic Republic,
Manual for Greeks Abroad, http://www.hri.org/ggae/guide/indexen.html (last visited Apr.
13, 2001).
259 Spurred by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that barred the denaturalization of U.S.
citizens for activities with respect to a foreign sovereign, U.S. law is now, in practice, quite
permissive of dual nationality. See supra note 179. However, the part of the naturalization
oath that forswears loyalty to other sovereigns seems to exhibit some hostility to dual nationality, even though it is not enforced. See Schuck, supra note 22, at 223 ("[T]he U.S.
has.., refrained from taking any meaningful steps to ensure that its new citizens' renunciation oaths are legally effective in their countries of origin."); see also Stanley Mailman &
Ted J. Chiappari, Nationality Law Issues Subject to Debate, N.Y. LJ., June 14, 1999, at 9
("As a matter of policy, the U.S. has not enforced the oath, and may have no mechanism to
do so."); Spiro, supra note 22, at 1415 ("[Ihe oath of renunciation undertaken by naturalization applicants has never been enforced.").
260 See infra Part IV.D for an elaboration and application of this diaspora choice-of-law
model.
261 TWo important questions arise, both beyond the scope of this Article: First, should
this autonomy be restricted only to the diaspora? And second, should we permit the diaspora to choose not only the law of its homeland but also the law of a third state, no law at
all, or the rules promulgated by a private association?
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DIASPORA BONDS
mandatory.2 62 However, the traditional approach seeks to classify
each law as one or the other263 without analyzing whether a particular
law might have both public and private aspects.
This approach recalls, at least superficially, the conflict-of-laws64
approach of the "Italian patriot, lawyer, statesman and professor"2
Pasquale Stanislao Mancini, who in 1851 advocated that choice-of-law
rules for private law (such private law being personal and not related
to territory) should be based on party autonomy and links to the person's homeland. 265 Mancini promoted a choice-of-law system based
on the lex patriae, the national law of the person living abroad, as
contrasted with the lex fori, the law of the forum where the dispute
arose. 266 But unlike Mancini's approach, which relies on citizenshipthe citizen taking his homeland's private law with him when he travels
abroad-the diaspora model does not require citizenship in the homeland before it permits the diaspora individual to travel with her homeland's law.267 Also, more importantly, unlike Mancini's approach, the
choice of law and forum would be explicit and transaction-based,
rather than implicit and comprehensive.
In determining whether to enforce a choice-of-law clause selecting the law of the homeland, a court would consider the individual's
status as a member of a diaspora to be legally relevant. 26 Many, including members of diasporas, will find such an official acknowledgment of an individual's national origin distasteful. Why should we
treat people differently based on their national origin? Is that not racism? However, if we view membership in diaspora through the same
lens as we view citizenship, we can see that treating diaspora membership as legally relevant should not always be considered impermissible. Many decisions in conflict of laws are influenced by the
262 See generally Symposium, A Symposium on the PublicPrivate Distinction, 130 U.
Pa. L. Rev. 1289 (1982).
263 Following this approach, Philip McConnaughay suggests that the public/private distinction can best be seen as a distinction between laws that have significant externalities
associated with noncompliance (thus being "public" lavs because of the public impact) and
those having a private impact. Philip J. McConnaughay, Reviving the "Public Law Taboo"
in International Conflict of Laws, 35 Stan. J. Int'l L 255, 305-07 (1999).
264 Friedrich K. Juenger, Choice of Lav and Multistate Justice 41 (1993).
265 Id.
266 Id.
267
Ancient history provides an interesting precedent: "With some exaggeration,
Josephus asserts that the one Law of Judaism prevailed throughout the vast Diaspora,
though its sanctions were exclusively moral." Jacob A. Agus, Judaism, in Historical Atlas
of the Religions of the World 139, 144 (Isma'iI Ragi al Farquqi ed., 1974).
268 Cf. Kenneth L. Karst, Paths to Belonging- The Constitution and Cultural Identity, 64
N.C. L. Rev. 303, 305 (1986) ("When can government properly treat membership in a
racial or ethnic group as legally relevant?").
[Vol. 76:1005
citizenship of the parties. 26 9 If diaspora membership were viewed as
something akin to citizenship then it may not seem unfair to find it
relevant to the question whether a court should uphold the choice of
the law of the homeland.
Affirmative Discrimination. The diaspora model would review
discrimination in favor of other diaspora members with great care.
While discrimination based on identity might seem to violate the goal
of equality, the model would appreciate that the discrimination might
be based on a desire for community. That would not, however, mean
that such discrimination would receive a pass. 270 Instead, such discrimination would be judged according to standards similar to those
we impose on classifications based on citizenship. The formal tie of
citizenship is considered an acceptable basis for restricting rights to
certain groups, even though such a criterion is closely related to national ancestry.
Moreover, though it is more controversial, national ancestry
sometimes is used as a basis for obtaining a "right of return" which
enables a person to claim citizenship in a particular country from
which that person or her ancestors emigrated (or to which that person
has a special link through other means). Under the law of return of
countries such as Ireland and Israel, people claiming a certain ancestral or religious link to a country are permitted to "return" to that
country and take up citizenship at will. 271 The right of return has a
269 For example, the balancing approach enunciated in Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank
of America, 549 F.2d 597 (9th Cir. 1976), inquires, inter alia, into the "nationality or allegiance" of the parties in determining whether U.S. courts have extraterritorial jurisdiction
over a case. Id. at 614. Though it remains controversial, Timberlane's balancing approach
has been accepted in Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law § 403(2) (1987)
("Whether jurisdiction ... is unreasonable is determined by evaluating all relevant factors,
including .. nationality [and] residence .... ").
270 Indeed, Part IV.D of this Article suggests that the effort by India to restrict the sale
of its Resurgent India Bonds only to "Non-Resident Indians" (i.e., the Indian diaspora as
defined by New Delhi) may be inappropriate.
271 David Cantrell, So You Wanna Be Irish?, 5 Eugene F. Collins Dispatch 3, 11 5-7
(Apr. 1999) at http://www.efc.ie/dispatchlissue5/three.htm (describing ways in which person of Irish descent born outside Ireland can acquire Irish citizenship) (last visited Aug. 30,
2001). Under Israeli law, the right of return is quite broad, encompassing not only Jews
but also their family members:
[A]ny person who is considered a "Jew," according to the legal definition encoded in section 4B of the Law of Return, has an open invitation from the
State of Israel to establish his or her life in that country as a citizen. This
invitation to settle in Israel (or "right of return") is also conferred upon family
members of that person, up to a third generation regardless of their own religious affiliation. Moreover, non-Jewish family members have an inalienable
right to return even if the person through whom the right is claimed has deceased or has never settled in Israel.
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
1057
dialectic relationship to diaspora, because each person who exercises
that right removes herself from the diaspora. 27 - Yet, at the same time,
since it is generally unlikely that the bulk of any diaspora will exercise
that right, the right of return may serve to increase the feeling of connection to the homeland, the place that, despite even separation by
generations, will always welcome you back.
Influencing Public Policy Towards the Homeland. The model
would allow diaspora petitions on behalf of the homeland, but it also
would realize that these are nonobjective assessments, tied up in the
history and politics of that land.
Multicultural Claims. The diaspora model would favor a multicultural approach to community. Freedom of Movement and Immigration. The diaspora model would be a strong defender of the
freedom of movement and of liberalized immigration policies.
The Diasporain InternationalLaw. At the same time that international law rejects the relevance of diasporas, it exalts the principle
of the self-determination of peoples. Two explanations, both from the
statist model, can be offered to reconcile these results. First, a people
could be defined territorially-once persons move outside a defined
territory of a community and inside the boundaries of a foreign community, they no longer belong to the people of the original community. Second, the principle of self-determination might give way to the
stronger principle of logistical convenience. It is easier to deal with a
world with strict boundaries on membership in the polity; the simplest
existing boundaries are those of the nation-state.
But diasporas are, by definition, a scattered people who retain
their sense of community. And as commentators have pointed out, "a
document of the authority of the United Nations Charter states that
the organization is founded by the 'peoples of the world' rather than
by the states of the world." 273
The diaspora model recognizes a weak claim to self-determination for the diaspora as a people-like community. The diaspora model
adopts the New Haven School of International Law's concern with
Ayelet Shachar, Whose Republic?: Citizenship and Membership in the Israeli Polity, 13
Geo. Immigr. LI. 233, 234-35 (1999) (citations omitted).
272 Alan Arian, The Second Republic: Politics in Israel 19 (1998) (noting that law of
return "change[s] the place of residence of the world's Jews from the Diaspora to Zion").
273 Myres S. McDougal et al., The World Constitutive Process of Authoritarian Decision, in International Law Essays, supra note 128, at 223, (citing U.N. Charter, Preamble);
see also U.N. Charter art. 1, para. 2 (referring to principles of "equal rights and self-determination of peoples").
[Vol. 76:1005
individual human dignity as the primary criterion for evaluating the
274
international system:
The long term policy most compatible with an international law of
human dignity would be one that seeks the utmost voluntarism in
affiliation, participation, and movement, with an easy assumption by
states of a competence to protect such individuals as seek their protection. The individual should be able to become a member of, and
to participate in the value processes of, as many bodies politic as his
2 75
capabilities will permit.
The diaspora model follows this prescription, allowing the individual to define her own political identity, subject to (as a concession
to political necessity) the constraint of which states are willing to admit her. Thus, it permits a certain degree of autonomy in private matters. But if self-determination is defined by the power to decree the
laws that bind oneself, it requires the right to participate in decisionmaking, to have one's voice heard. The diaspora model suggests that
the diaspora may not be properly represented through the traditional
organs of international lawmaking such as nation-states, multilateral
organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. The demand for
such representation was foreseen decades ago; scholars predicted that
"[a]s global interaction intensifies and concentricity of identification
increases, entities seeking formal power in arenas larger than the na'276
tion-state may be expected to increase concomitantly.
One major difficulty is the lack of existing representative organs
in modem diasporas. Diasporas generally do not elect representatives
or maintain democratic institutions, though they may maintain important associations that do represent democratic processes. This "democracy deficit" perhaps would destroy any claim that the diaspora
2 77 This
should be a legitimate participant in international lawmaking.
lack of democratic institutions, however, may not be a permanent disability, but rather a natural result of the hostility that diasporas have
faced over the centuries. That is, to organize and conduct elections
See supra note 239.
McDougal et al., supra note 152, at 903. See also Myres S. McDougal & Harold D.
Lasswell, The Identification and Appraisal of Diverse Systems of Public Order, in International Law Essays, supra note 128, at 15, 28 (appraising any system of public order on basis
of "the overarching goal of human dignity"); see generally Fernando R. Tes6n, A Philosophy of International Law (1999).
276 McDougal et al., supra note 273, at 228 (making prediction in 1967, and discussing
political parties as participants in international law).
277 A number of scholars have suggested that states that do not represent the wishes of
their people do not have a legitimate claim to participate in the international decisionmaking process. See, e.g., Tes6n, supra note 275, at 2 ("If international law is to be morally
legitimate... it must mandate that states respect human rights as a precondition for joining the international community.").
274
275
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
would have offered the final proof of disloyalty to those who accused
diasporas of disloyalty to their adopted country. But if the diaspora
model prevailed, and dual loyalties were acknowledged and respected,
then it is possible that the diaspora would feel freer to organize itself
and elect representatives.
Under the model, diasporas, at least when appropriately represented through democratic processes, would be recognized as participants in international lawmaking, whether such lawmaking is
conceived as a world constitutive process or as a transnational legal
process. 278 Diasporas would take their place aside the territorial units
such as nation-states, intergovernmental organizations, political parties, pressure groups and private associations in the world constitutive
process of international lawmaking. 79 Diasporas also would stand
with the "nation-states, international organizations, multinational enterprises, nongovernmental organizations, and private individuals" as
the actors involved in the transnational legal process.2 0
The diaspora model does not suggest that diasporas be recognized in a form akin to states, with juridical equality and diplomatic
immunity for their representatives. Diasporas might be permitted to
enter into international agreements with other transnational actors,
but only if democratic processes exist to appoint proper plenipotentiaries. Such representation has special significance for deterritorialized
peoples, such as the Roma, who have no homeland to serve as the
focal point of the national imagination.2 1
A diaspora can help mediate conflict between its homeland and
its adopted country. 282 The diaspora can educate the leaders of its
adopted country on the concerns of its homeland's government 283
while at the same time teaching the homeland's government about the
278 Another approach worthy of study would be to allow representation before international lawmaking bodies for the "transnation"-that is, the community formed by the joining of the homeland and other diasporan segments. T6l6lyan, supra note 44, at 19,32 n.19.
279 McDougal et al., supra note 128, at 224-31 (describing range of participants in international law).
280 Harold Hongju Koh, Why Do Nations Obey International Law?, 106 Yale LJ.2599,
2626 (1997).
281 In their lack of a contemporary homeland, the situation of the Roma is reminiscent
of the condition of the Jews prior to the formation of the modem state of Israel (though it
could be said that the ancient land of Israel did serve as a focal point for Jews in diaspora
even before it became once again a Jewish homeland). At the turn of the last century. at
least one prominent transnational Jewish association, the Bund, "demanded cultural and
national autonomy for the Jews." Richard Marienstras, On the Notion of Diasporas, in
Minority Peoples in the Age of Nation-States 119, 123 (Gdrard Chaliand ed., 1989).
282 See infra text accompanying note 472.
283 Cf. Simone Tan, Note, Dual Nationality in France and the United States, 15 Hastings
Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 447, 447 (1992) (calling U.S. citizens abroad "'ambassadors' overseas" for homeland).
1060
[Vol. 76:1005
concerns of the government of the diaspora's adopted country. Of
course, the diaspora's concerns can be parochial in their own right.
Some Indian Americans might, for example, agitate for poorer treatment of Pakistan by the United States.
Table 1 summarizes the positions that the statist, cosmopolitan,
and diaspora models would likely take towards each type of diaspora
legal claim. A "no" entry in the table means that the statist or cosmopolitan model would resist the specified diaspora effort, not that either model would necessarily outlaw it altogether.
IV
DIASPORA
BoNDs: A CASE STUDY
To attack poverty, developing nations must promote opportunities in jobs, schooling, and healthful living, facilitate empowerment by
making public institutions more accountable to people, and enhance
security by reducing vulnerability to economic shocks, natural disasters, and ill health. 2 4 While public expenditures may not be the primary means of economic development, 28 5 governments require capital
to build and improve basic infrastructure and to manage crises-functions necessary to promote opportunities, empowerment, and security.
Diasporas offer an important source of capital for a developing country and may be especially attractive sources of capital for two reasons:
They may accept a lower rate of return on capital than that demanded
by the general market, 286 and they may be willing to supply capital at
reasonable rates even when the country is in a dire condition. 287
Diaspora Bonds are debt instruments offered by sovereign governments to raise capital principally or exclusively from their diasporas. 2 88 They arise through the convergence of the globalization of
capital and of people. As such, they offer an important case study of
diaspora legal problems in the context of something as central as the
regulation of money flows. Moreover, a study of the legal issues
284 World Bank, Attacking Poverty: World Development Report 2000/2001, at 6-7
(2001).
285 Id. at 6 (noting that investments in physical capital and infrastructure are not enough
to promote development).
288 Diaspora Bonds represent only one class of sovereign capital-raising activity in the
debt markets. They must be distinguished from bonds issued by a sovereign domestically
(such as United States Treasury bonds), which present an important capital-raising method
for nations with large domestic debt markets, and from bonds issued internationally but
not targeted principally at a nation's diaspora (such as Eurobonds). The arguments made
here as to how we should regulate Diaspora Bonds depend significantly on the special
relationship diasporas have to their homeland, and thus should not be applied uncritically
to all international debt market activity by sovereigns.
October 2001]
TABLE
DIASPORA BONDS
1: THIREE
Legal Claim
APPROACHES TO DIAsPoRA LEGAL CLAIIS
Statist Model
Cosmopolitan
Diaspora Model
Model
Recognition?
No. Assimilation
favored,
No. No historical
or ethnic alle-
Yes.
giance.
Dual Citizenship?
No. Undivided
loyalty necessary.
Yes. Dual citizenship acceptable.
Yes.
Limited Self-Governance?
No. Would contradict state's
monopoly on
power.
Yes, but historical
or ethnic basis of
community disfavored.
Yes, but constrained by
adopted land's
public law.
Prodiaspora activity?
No. Reflects
"patriotism" to
the wrong
"patria."
No, because of
historical or ethnic basis of diaspora.
Yes.
Lobbying for
Homeland?
No. Would show
loyalty to another
state.
No, because of
historical or ethnic basis of such
petitions.
Yes.
Multiculturalism?
No. Assimilationist ideal of one
nation, one state.
Yes.
Yes.
Freedom of
Movement?
Yes, but should
not lead to dual
loyalty.
Yes. Warmly
embraced.
Yes.
Liberal Immigration?
No. Harms one
nation/one state
Yes. As liberal as
possible.
Yes.
Yes, but norm
sought should not
Yes.
goal.
Representation in
International
Law-making?
No. States only
should participate.
be communal.
raised by the offering of Diaspora Bonds in the United States may
assist countries as they consider mechanisms to raise capital.
Countries have long worried about the "brain drain" represented
by the diaspora, as educated individuals left to seek better economic
opportunities elsewhere. Diaspora Bonds represent an effort by the
homeland country to turn this loss into a gain.289
289 Diaspora Bonds can be contrasted with the "citizen's tax" that economist Jagdish
Bhagwati has proposed. Under that tax, a developing nation would tax the income of its
citizens abroad, thereby offsetting somewhat the loss of human capital occurring through
the "brain drain." The concept is laid out in Taxing the Brain Drain I: A Proposal (Jagdish
N. Bhagwati & Martin Partington eds., 1976). Unlike the citizen's tax, Diaspora Bonds
permit the developing nation to reach members of its diaspora who have relinquished their
homeland citizenship. CL Richard A. Musgrave, Foreword to Income Taxation and International Mobility xi, xii (Jagdish N. Bhagwati & John Douglas Wilson eds., 1989) (noting
[Vol. 76:1005
We can trace these efforts back at least as far as the Liberty
Bonds offered by the Republic of China in the 1930s and sold through
Chinese Benevolent Associations in the United States. 290 Japan also
issued bonds, placed through the Japanese Patriotic Bond Subscription Society.291 Israel began offering State of Israel Bonds shortly after its birth, and has since raised almost eighteen billion dollars. 292 In
1991, India turned to its expatriate community by offering "India Development Bonds" during a balance of payments crisis, and raised $2
billion in 1992 and 1993.293 Again, in 1998, India found itself in need
294
of funds, and once again turned to its diaspora as described below.
India's successful efforts have led nations such as Bangladesh and the
Philippines to indicate their own plans to issue Diaspora Bonds.2 95
The case study focuses on some basic questions of international
securities regulation raised by Diaspora Bonds: Whose law should
govern these instruments? Whose courts should hear any related
cases? Traditionalists (including most securities lawyers) would apply
a strictly statist approach: Because Diaspora Bonds are offered
through instrumentalities or means of United States interstate commerce, they should be subject to the United States's securities laws in
full measure. 296 Some modem law and economics scholars, however,
challenge some of the presuppositions of that view, especially the notion that it makes sense invariably to apply United States law to securities transactions occurring in the United States.2 97 These scholars
have argued in favor of a market approach. Here we introduce a paradigm that represents a version of cosmopolitanism. 298 The market
approach, championed by corporate law scholars such as Roberta
Romano, would displace mandatory securities law with optional law,
that proposed tax may be avoided by renunciation of citizenship). But fundamentally, like
the citizen's tax, Diaspora Bonds help a developing country access the capital of its richer
diaspora.
290 SEC v. Chinese Benevolent Ass'n, 120 F.2d 738, 739 (2d Cir. 1941) (enjoining offering of Chinese bonds in United States by Chinese American society on ground that bond
was not registered with SEC).
291 Id. at 741.
292 State of Israel, Prospectus Supplement: Debt Securities D-53 (Dec. 10, 1998) [hereinafter State of Israel Prospectus]. These instruments represent one-third of Israel's total
public sector external debt. Id. (describing outstanding State of Israel Bonds as representing approximately "31% of Israel's total public sector external debt" as of December 31,
1997).
293 Shefali Rekhi, Resurgent India Bonds: Forging a Bond, India Today, Aug. 3, 1998,
http:lwww.india-today.comlitoday/030819981biz.html.
294 See infra Part IV.A.
295 See supra notes 39-40.
297 See infra notes 413-21.
298 See supra text accompanying notes 213-15 and infra Part IV.C.
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
1063
not just with respect to Diaspora Bonds but for all securities offerings,
domestic or international. 299 Relying on economic analysis, these
scholars reason that it is more efficient to permit the parties to a particular transaction to choose a governing securities regime precisely
tailored for the particular issuer, issue, and even purchaser. 30
The diaspora model offers a third alternative, a hybrid approach
that seeks to mediate the efficiency concern expressed through a
freely chosen governing law with the public interest concern underlying the United States securities laws. It is possible to reconcile two
goals: facilitating the raising of capital for economic development
through Diaspora Bonds by relenting somewhat in applying the
United States domestic securities regime, and still maintaining vigilant
protection of American investors.
The case study will focus on the most prominent recent offering
of Diaspora Bonds, the Resurgent India Bonds. These instruments
present the issues raised by Diaspora Bonds in sharp relief. India's
offering in 1998 to its expatriates has three novel features: (1) India
asserts that these instruments offered by its state bank are certificates
of deposit rather than debt securities; (2) the instruments specify that
suits under them can be brought only in Indian court under Indian
law; and (3) they are available only to its diaspora.
Through the first two features, India seeks to avoid the application of the strict and often expensive United States securities regulatory regime.301 These two features, the second more directly than the
first in its attempt explicitly to limit jurisdiction, thus raise the issue of
the application of United States law. Because of the possibility they
offer to reduce the risk of liability under the United States securities
laws, these two features will undoubtedly prove attractive to other nations considering Diaspora Bonds. Through the third feature, India
seeks to maintain control over who may invest in its future. The last
effort has already engendered a lawsuit in New York alleging illegal
national origin discrimination. 302
It is important to note that not all Diaspora Bonds need share
these features of the Resurgent India Bonds. In fact, the State of
Israel Bonds exhibit none of these attributes. Instead, they are clearly
denoted as securities, they are registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and, while they are marketed principally to diasporan Jewry, they are available for purchase
299 See, e.g., Roberta Romano, Empowering Investors: A Market Approach to Securities Regulation, 107 Yale LJ.2359, 2424 (1998).
See infra note 343.
See infra note 343 and accompanying text.
300
301
[Vol. 76:1005
by all, without discrimination.30 3 Thus, the State of Israel Bonds
demonstrate one method by which a homeland might engage in relations with its diaspora-simply by complying in full with the laws of
the diaspora's adopted country. But while the Israeli bonds do not
raise difficult issues of securities regulation, they too demonstrate a
commitment to a foreign sovereign and thereby raise issues of loyalty.
State of Israel Bonds thus remind us that, in addition to the questions about governing law, forum selection, and national origin discrimination raised by the Indian instruments, the context of the
Resurgent India Bond offering raises the issue of dual loyalty. In May
1998, India exploded five nuclear bombs for testing purposes. 304 The
United States and the rest of the world responded by issuing sanctions.305 India countered by turning to its diaspora-including Indian
Americans-for economic support to withstand the sanctions. In
purchasing the bonds, Indian Americans deliberately flouted the
stated policy of the United States-to sanction India for its nuclear
testing-and joined India in celebrating its newfound military prowess. Do the Resurgent India Bonds thus demonstrate a disloyalty on
the part of Indian Americans?
Aside from their implications for international securities regulation, Diaspora Bonds also tell us something about the relationship between the diaspora and its homeland. Subscription to Diaspora Bonds
demonstrates support for a foreign sovereign, implying a dual allegiance that the statist model would view with suspicion. The investment itself further aligns the interests of the diaspora with those of the
home government, as the value of the investment depends on the
homeland's economic future. Diaspora Bonds can, as Resurgent India
Bonds show, undermine United States foreign policy, as expressed
through economic sanctions. How should we regulate the ties, especially economic ones, of diasporas to their homeland's governments?
The case study proceeds as follows: The first section describes
the characteristics of Diaspora Bonds, and the Resurgent India Bonds
in particular. The second section considers India's technical argument
that Resurgent India Bonds are not subject to the United States securities regime because they are bank certificates of deposit, not debt
securities. This demonstrates the possibility of structuring a transnational transaction to avoid a conflict of laws, thus avoiding making any
diasporan legal claim at all. The third section turns to the cosmopolitan market approach to Diaspora Bonds, beginning with the current
303 See State of Israel Prospectus, supra note 292.
304 Sengupta, supra note 2.
305
Id.
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
case law and then reviewing the market-oriented scholarship. The
fourth section offers the diaspora model's alternative to the statist or
cosmopolitan approaches. Finally, the fifth section briefly examines
the limitation that only Indians in the diaspora can purchase these
instruments, demonstrating the possibility of discrimination based on
ancestry.
This Part concludes that the principle of strict territoriality in the
application of United States laws should concede some ground in
favor of the diaspora choosing to order the private aspects of its relationship with its homeland's sovereign through the homeland's laws.
This conclusion helps demonstrate the vitality of the diaspora model
and its applicability to real world problems.
A.
UnderstandingDiasporaBonds
Before turning to the regulation of Diaspora Bonds, it is useful to
consider some background issues that may help clarify the debate
about how to regulate these instruments. This Section begins with a
brief sketch of the Resurgent India Bonds. It then turns to the question of why India chose this particular method to raise capital. Next, it
examines the motivations of the persons who purchased the Resurgent India Bonds. Finally, this Section sets the stage for the inquiry of
how to regulate these instruments by considering why a country such
as India might prefer its own courts and laws to those of the United
States.
1. A "Resurgent India"
In May 1998, India exploded five nuclear bombs in the northern
desert of Pokhran for testing purposes.306 The explosions and the international sanctions they drew reverberated through the financial
markets, leading to a decline in the Indian stock markets, the rupee
exchange rate, and the sovereign credit rating 307 (which was down30 s
graded by Standard and Poor's).
306
Id.
Tim McGirk, Living With the Bomb, Tune Asia, Aug. 3,1998, at 22, LEXIS, Human
Resources Library, Tune File (noting rupee depreciation and Bombay Stock Exchange
drop after nuclear tests).
308 India: Credit Rating Change Not warranted: Sinha, Hindu, Oct. 24, 1993. 1998 WL
15916353; see also Tunothy J. Sinclair, Passing Judgment: Credit Rating Processes as Regulatory Mechanisms of Governance in the Emerging world Order, 1 Rev. Int'l PoL Econ.
133, 149-50 (1994) (noting increasing importance of sovereign credit ratings). The diaspora's strong support for India in its crisis suggests that the rating agencies need to look at
a country's diaspora as bearing upon the country's creditworthiness beyond simply the
worker remittance flow.
307
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[Vol. 76:1005
Faced with a looming economic crisis, India turned "to its sons
and daughters abroad. '309 As in an earlier crisis when the State Bank
of India had raised funds from Indian expatriates, 310 the State Bank of
India again appealed to expatriates. It asked not for charity, but for
investments in the form of deposits to be repaid in five years.311
The Resurgent India Bonds were promoted heavily through the
media of the Indian diaspora, 312 including through the Internet
(thereby demonstrating the power of the Internet as a tool to bring
together the diaspora and its homeland). The instruments were marketed explicitly to appeal to nationalist sentiments of Indian expatriates, whether they were Indian citizens or not.31 3 The Indian
government named the instruments to evoke a mythic glorious past
when India had been "surging." 314
India did not file a registration statement with the SEC, nor did it
receive no-action letter relief from the SEC recognizing the probable
availability of an exemption from registration.31 5 Instead, it sought
and obtained clearance from banking authorities in the specific states
in which it planned to market the instruments. 316 It sold the instruments in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States 317 through
Indian and foreign commercial banks that specialized in providing services to Indian expatriates. 31 8 The sale was overwhelmingly successful, raising $4.2 billion, 319 more than double the initial goal, all the
Sengupta, supra note 2.
See supra text accompanying note 293.
311 Sengupta, supra note 2.
312 Because this marketing would likely constitute a "general solicitation," India would
not be able to avail itself of the safe harbor available under Regulation D exempting from
required registration the private placement of securities. Securities Act of 1933, Rule
502(c). This only is relevant to the extent that the Resurgent India Bonds are treated as
securities, not bank deposits. See infra Part IV.B.
313 See Sengupta, supra note 2.
314 Cf. Eric Hobsbawm, Introduction: Inventing Traditions, in The Invention of Tradition 1, 13 (Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger eds., 1983) (noting role of "invented traditions" in creation of "nation").
315 Cf. Telephone Interview with Paul Dudek, General Counsel, Corporation Finance,
Securities and Exchange Commission (Oct. 5, 1998) (on file with the New York University
Law Review).
316 US Okay for Resurgent Bonds Cleared in US, Business Standard (India), Aug. 1,
1998, at 1, 1998 WL 12550715.
317 Krishna Guha, Resurgent Bond Issue Raises $4.2bn: India Expatriates Bolster
Reserves, Fin. Times (London), Aug. 26, 1998 (reporting on issue of bond subscriptions to
expatriate Indians in twenty-seven countries).
318 14 Banks to Aid SBI Hawk Resurgent Bonds, Fin. Express (India), July 20, 1998, at
http:llwww.fmancialexpress.com/fe/daily/19980720/20155234.html (listing ten foreign and
four Indian domestic banks mandated to collect deposits in Resurgent India Bonds).
319 Amitava Sanyal & Janaki Krishnan, India Millennium Deposit Not to Be Sold in the
US, at http://www.rediff.com/money/2OOO/oct/O9imd.htm (on file with the New York Uni309
310
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
more remarkable because they were offered in August 1998,320 a time
of substantial turmoil in the international financial markets. 32 1 This
infusion of capital came at a crucial time and helped India withstand
the shock of economic sanctions, which continue as of this writing. 32
The success of the Resurgent India Bonds is even more remarkable in light of the fact that the interest rates on the instruments, 7.75%
for United States dollar-denominated instruments, 8.00% for British
pound instruments, and 6.25% for deutsche mark instruments, were
lower than what India's credit rating would suggest they should have
32 4
been. 323 A sovereign with a below-investment-grade credit rating
would have found it difficult or impossible to obtain funding in the
international debt markets at these rates without securing the debt or
versity Law Review). India raised $590 million of this sum in the United States through
these instruments. Id.
320 Resurgent Bonds Pull-In Tops $4 Bn, Verma Thumbs Nose at Sanctions, F'm. Express
(India), Aug. 26, 1998, [hereinafter Resurgent Bonds Pull-In] http:/I
www.financialexpress.com/fe/daily/19980826123855244.html (last visited May 21, 2001).
321 Bank for Int'l Settlements, 69th Annual Report 3 (1999) (noting "crisis in financial
markets in August and September" of 1998).
322 Indian Economy Has Grown Despite US Sanctions, Asian Crisis, Asia Pulse, Apr.
27, 1999, LEXIS, News Group File (citing international economists' view that "the Resurgent India Bonds ensured that financial flows to India did not suffer due to the economic
sanctions").
323 Heightened concerns for risk resulted in high interest rates for emerging markets
borrowers during the second half of 1998. Monetary and Econ. Dep't, Bank for Int'l Settlements, BIS Quarterly Review March 1999, at 18 (noting that sovereign borrowers that
"managed to launch sizable bond issues" in late 1998 did so with "margins [that were]
much higher than in the first half of 1998"). The Bank for International Settlements reports that the average spread of U.S.-dollar-denominated Asian sovereign international
bonds over ten-year U.S. treasury bonds was approximately 400 basis points (4.0%) during
July 1998. Id. at 20; see also Kala Rao, Resurgence Bond Taps Diaspora, Euromoney, Oct.
1998, at 18 (quoting AR Barwe, managing director at SBI Capital Markets, as saying, -The
best-quality Indian paper was trading at spreads of 450bp [basis points] at the time" of
Resurgent India Bond offering). At that time, the yield on the ten-year U.S. treasury bond
was approximately 5.3%. See Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt,
Public Debt News, Aug. 12, 1998, httpj/www.publicdebt.treas.gov (last visited May 10,
2001).
Adding the 400-basis-point spread to the U.S. treasury bond yield of 5.3% suggests
that the Resurgent India Bonds should have yielded some 9.3% in interest annually, more
than 150 basis points higher than the 7.75% at which they were actually issued. This fact
was not lost on the State Bank of India, whose Chairman declared: "Debt issues of similar
maturities floated in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Poland are priced between 8 and 13 per
cent. Only debt issues floated by the European Union countries and those which are
triple-A rated or backed by mortgages can raise funds at lower than 7.5 per cent ... ."
Resurgent Bonds Pull-In, supra note 320 (quoting State Bank of India Chairman M.S.
Verma).
324 Moody's Assigns Ba3 Rating to Resurgent Bonds, Bus. line (India), Dc. 19, 1998,
1998 WL 20734273; see also http'//vww.moodys.com.
1068
[Vol. 76:1005
otherwise offering credit enhancement. 32s Disinterested investors
would have demanded a higher rate of return to compensate for the
riskiness of investing in a non-investment-grade instrument.
Because of their remarkable success and their innovative legal
characteristics, the Resurgent India Bonds may prove an attractive
model for raising capital for other nations with significant diasporas.
2. Why Issue DiasporaBonds?
Why do countries issue Diaspora Bonds rather than simply asking
for charity, especially given that a country does not have to repay donations? Though the answer could be that nations prefer not to ask
for handouts, the more practical reason for choosing Diaspora Bonds
over charity solicitation is that Diaspora Bonds raise more money.
The economic model of the rational person would suggest that if
an individual is willing to donate $100 to a country, then she should be
willing to purchase Diaspora Bonds in a much larger amount at a
lower-than-market interest rate, such that the present value of the
amount of interest forgone by not investing in a market-rate instrument equals $100.326 Thus, rather than receive $100 in charity (and
owe nothing but good will in return), the country can receive, say,
$2000 as proceeds from Diaspora Bonds, but owe the principal and
some interest. At the same time, for the investor, Diaspora Bonds
offer a means to satisfy the altruistic desire to help one's homeland
while earning a somewhat satisfactory rate of return. 327 Thus, Diaspora Bonds leverage the charitable intention into a larger investment.
By providing a source for the large amounts of capital that are
often absent in emerging-market nations but necessary for growth,3 28
Diaspora Bonds can help serve economic development. If successfully employed, the proceeds of Diaspora Bonds will increase growth
and thereby generate the funds necessary to pay the principal and interest on the loans. Because Diaspora Bonds can be used to mobilize
large amounts of capital quickly, they are especially useful for developing infrastructure or meeting short-term financial crises. In this
325 S. Vaidya Nathan, India-Morgan Stanley's View-No Room for Further Fall, Bus.
Line, Nov. 1, 1998, at 10, http://www.indiaserver.com/businessline/1998/11/O1/stories/
12010458.htm (reporting Morgan Stanley's finding that Resurgent India Bonds carried "a
lower cost as compared to other emerging markets debt").
326 The calculations would be different if the diaspora investor had a different view of
the riskiness of the instrument than did the market. If she thought the instrument were
less risky, she would correspondingly be willing to buy even more.
327 See infra Part IV.A.3.
328 See, e.g., Lan Cao, Toward a New Sensibility for International Economic Development, 32 Tex. Int'l L.J. 209, 235 (1997) (describing traditional liberal economic view that
developing countries lack capital surplus needed for economic growth).
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
way, Diaspora Bonds take the sometimes destructive force of nationalism and put it into the service of economic development. Like all
capital raising, however, if the proceeds of Diaspora Bonds are missthe external debt of the
pent, they will harm the country by increasing
3 29
country without a corresponding return.
Nations can also use Diaspora Bonds to strengthen ties to their
diaspora. 330 The purchase of the bonds itself aligns, to some degree,
the diaspora's economic interests with the economic interests of the
home country, because the value of the instruments turns upon the
economic health of the country.
3. Why Buy DiasporaBonds?
Why does the diaspora invest when the interest rate does not reflect the country's international credit rating? One answer might be
that the diaspora has it right-that it assesses the risks better than the
rating agencies. The diaspora may be more likely to distinguish the
economic situation in its home country from those of other emergingmarket nations. The diaspora is less likely to suffer from some of the
worst alleged characteristics of the "Tequila Effect" or "Asian Contagion," where the failures of one emerging market economy are attributed indiscriminately to others. 331 However, whether such irrational
behavior actually occurs is subject to dispute.
Diaspora Bonds can be contrasted with another method for raising capital for economic development-noncontrolling equity investment. Merritt Fox argues in favor of foreign portfolio investment in emerging-market countries on the ground that portfolio
investment has two key advantages: First, control of the enterprise for which capital is
being raised does not pass to the foreign investor (a feature shared with Eurodollar borrowings), and second, risk for a project is shared with the foreign investor (a feature shared
with foreign direct investment). Merritt B. Fox, The Legal Environment of International
Finance: Thinking About Fundamentals, 17 Mich. J. Int'l L 721, 728-29 (1996). Diaspora
Bonds carry the first advantage, but not the second: while the emerging market country
retains control over the projects for which the proceeds are used, it also retains the entire
project's risks.
330 See Heather Camlot, High Holidays Feature: Rabbis Promote Bond Sales to Further Israel-Diaspora Ties, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Aug. 22, 1996, at 8, 1996 WL
15744974 (quoting promoter as saying, "The bonds become an instrumentality to connect
the Diaspora with the State of Israel"). Keith Aoki makes a related point with respect to
ownership of real property- "Prevailing liberal and civic republican visions of property
ownership rest on the notions that owning property, in some important way, ties an individual's fate to the fate of the larger polity, giving him or her a stake in important political
controversies of the day .... ." Keith Aoki, No Right to Own?: The Early TwentiethCentury "Alien Land Laws" as a Prelude to Internment, 40 B.C. L Rev. 37, 6-69 (1998).
331 The "Tequila Effect" refers to the flight of capital from emerging market countries
following the Mexican peso devaluation. Bob Woodward, Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and
the American Boom, Challenge, May 1, 2001 (book review), 2001 WL 13434174. Following currency crises in Southeast Asia in mid-1997, the international financial markets
evinced a similar "flight to quality," with capital flowing out of Asia. Bank for Int'l Settlements, International Banking and Financial Markets Developments 1 (Feb. 1993); Bank
329
[Vol. 76:1005
A more compelling explanation as to why diasporas invest despite the nonmarket interest rate is altruism. A desire to help the
homeland may motivate people in the diaspora to invest in instruments that raise capital for development. State of Israel Bonds clearly
demonstrate this altruistic motivation. Altruism explains why the
purchases of Israeli Bonds increased, not declined, during the Gulf
War. 332 Furthermore, many people who purchase State of Israel
Bonds never intend to redeem them, sometimes keeping the Bonds
for use only in a personal financial emergency in which redemption
becomes necessary. 33 3 Certain series of the State of Israel Bonds also
offer a lower rate of return than would be indicated by the country's
sovereign rating. From 1981 to 1997, some State of Israel Bonds were
sold with a fixed coupon of 4.0% for a fifteen-year term334-1ower
even than United States Treasury bills, long considered one of the safest investments in the world. Of course, not only the diaspora invests
in Diaspora Bonds. People with a special concern for a given country
also may be moved to purchase such bonds, at least if the particular
issue of Diaspora Bonds permits them to do
So.
33 5
for Int'l Settlements, International Banking and Financial Markets Developments 1 (Aug.
31, 1998) (noting "new wave of contagion in other emerging market economies, triggering
flights towards the U.S. and Europe, perceived as safe havens").
332 State of Israel Bonds Sales Approach $1 Billion for 1991; Landmark Achievement Is
Most Successful Campaign in Organization's History, PR Newswire, Jan. 9, 1992, LEXIS,
PR Newswire File (
The danger Israel faced as a result of the Gulf War, coupled with the emotion
and drama of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews seeking new lives in the Jewish homeland, triggered an outpouring of support that thousands of Jews and non-Jews
alike chose to express through the purchase of Israel Bonds.
(quoting National Campaign Chairman Michael Siegal)).
The Bond prospectus acknowledges the value of the Bonds in times of crisis: "The State of
Israel Bonds have proven to be a reliable source of financing for the State, particularly
under adverse circumstances, because many purchasers are individuals and institutions,
including the Jewish community over the world, that have an interest in Israel." State of
Israel Prospectus, supra note 292, at D-53.
333 At the end of 1998, $237 million in matured bonds from the Development Issue of
State of Israel bonds, no longer earning any interest, remained unclaimed. State of Israel
Prospectus, supra note 292, at D-62.
334 Id.
335 The story of Eric and Pearl Wright offers one example:
Eric and Pearl Wright, joint pastors of a small church, were looking for ways to
help Israel during the recent Persian Gulf War. Their answer was on page 9 of
the sports section in a newspaper.
"State of Israel Bonds Launches Emergency Campaign," said the full-page ad,
placed by the Jewish state as Iraqi missiles hit Tel Aviv, Soviet immigrants
poured into Ben-Gurion Airport and tourism all but vanished....
"It's really the Christian duty of every Christian to befriend and support Israel,
because the Bible tells us to do that, and I wanted to do more than just say that
I support Israel," said Eric Wright, a retired chemist and electrical
engineer....
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
Because concern for the homeland often drives the purchase of
Diaspora Bonds, the purchase of these instruments represents a type
of "social investing. ' 336 John Langbein and Richard Posner have
pointed out that "socially responsible" investment will result in an investment portfolio that is less diversified than a portfolio constructed
purely on the basis of profit maximization, 337 and other scholars have
argued that socially responsible investing results in a less profitable
portfolio. 338 Thus, like other socially responsible investments, Diaspora Bonds may be a vehicle for people to express their desire to do
good through their investments-at the cost perhaps of a lower rate of
return than would have been available without such social criteria.
On the other hand, a pension plan manager should eschew investments in Diaspora Bonds for two reasons: First, such investments
generally do not maximize the plan's rate of return; and second, as
such investments are often made for the benefit of the homeland issuer, and not exclusively for the benefit of the plan beneficiaries, it
may be contrary to trust law for a pension plan manager to make such
investments. 339
4. Offering DiasporaBonds in the United States
The offer document for the Resurgent India Bonds declares that
the instruments are not "securities" under the United States securities
laws and that those laws do not apply, 40 It goes on to specify that
Indian law will govern all disputes arising out of the instruments. Finally, it limits the fora in which disputes can be heard: Suits can be
'You realize that this is the biggest check I've ever written in my life?" he
asked.
"We love Israel," his vife replied.
Mathis Chazanov, Church Invests in Israel, LA. Tunes, Mar. 30, 1991, at SI.
336 See John H. Langbein & Richard A. Posner, Social Investing and the Law of Trusts,
79 Mich. L. Rev. 72,73 (1980) (defining "social investing" as including or excluding securi-
ties from investor's portfolio based on companies' social behavior, not on companies ability to maximize profits).
337 Id. at 85.
338 E.g., Maria O'Brien Hylton, "Socially Responsible" Investing: Doing Good Versus
Doing Well in an Inefficient Market, 42 Am. U. L Rev. 1, 49-51 (1992) (arguing that so-
cially responsible investing is likely to reduce investment returns in efficient market conditions, but might maximize income in inefficient market conditions).
339
Langbein & Posner, supra note 336, at 96; see also John H. Langbein & Bruce A.
Wolk, Pension and Employee Benefit Law 843 (3d ed. 2000) ("Social investing raises questions about the bounds of law and morality."). But see Joel C. Dobris, Arguments in Favor
of Fiduciary Divestment of "South African" Securities, 65 Neb. L Rev. 209, 230 (1986)
("[T]rust law should... allow recognition of social gain obtained at a financial cost.");
Hylton, supra note 338, at 43 (arguing that socially responsible investing may be legal for
trustees "only when practiced in its mildest forms").
[Vol. 76:1005
brought only in India and Germany, in the case of the deutsche markdenominated Resurgent India Bonds, or in India and the United
Kingdom, in the case of the pound-sterling bonds.341 But the symmetry between the currency of the Bonds and the jurisdictions in which
suit can be brought ends there: Under the terms of the Resurgent
India Bonds, suits arising out of the United States dollar-denominated
bonds can be brought only in India.3 42 Thus, India was willing to entertain suits in the United Kingdom or Germany, but not in the
United States.
India probably sought to avoid United States courts because they
are friendlier to plaintiffs than are courts of other countries. As
Roberta Romano explains, "in addition to class action mechanisms to
aggregate individual claims not prevalent in other countries, U.S. procedure-including rules on discovery, pleading requirements, contingent fees, and the absence of a 'loser pays' cost rule-are far more
favorable to plaintiffs than those of foreign courts. '343 One might also
add to the mix the high cost of United States lawyers, which makes
litigation in the United States inherently expensive. The combination
of these attributes poses a formidable risk to issuers bringing offerings
to the United States.
India seeks to avoid not only United States courts, but also
United States law. There are at least four reasons that an issuer involved in a global offering might seek to avoid United States law.
First, compliance with the requirements of the multiple jurisdictions in
which a global offering takes place is likely to be expensive. The issuer must hire legal counsel, pay registration fees, and incur significant costs in satisfying the disclosure requirements in each offering
jurisdiction. 344
Id.
Id.
343 Romano, supra note 299. James Cox also has noted the same pro-plaintiff features
of U.S. procedure: United States courts offer "somewhat permissive substantive standards
on issues of materiality, level of culpability, and causation." James D. Cox, Regulatory
Competition in Securities Markets: An Approach for Reconciling Japanese and United
States Disclosure Philosophies, 16 Hastings Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 149, 149-50 (1993) (citations omitted). "More importantly," Cox continues, "aggressive private enforcement of
the securities laws is subsidized through America's embrace of class action procedures as
well as the contingency fee arrangement." Id.
344 Merritt B. Fox, Securities Disclosure in a Globalizing Market: Who Should Regulate
Whom, 95 Mich. L. Rev. 2498, 2607 (1997). Issuers generally prefer avoiding differential
disclosure-i.e., different descriptions in different offering jurisdictions-because of the
difficulty in explaining in the course of any subsequent litigation why the issuer felt that
investors in one country should be denied information given to investors in another
country.
341
342
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
Second, the substantive features of the law may be unfavorable or
especially demanding for the particular type of issuer or issue. Countries have "differing definitions of what constitutes a security, the exemptions that apply for their sale and resale, and even what
constitutes misrepresentation." 345 Rescission (the unwinding of the
346
transaction) may be available to a victorious securities plaintiff
Third, compliance with the requirements of multiple regulatory
systems may delay the offering, not only because of the extensive legal
analysis necessary for such compliance but also because of the time
involved in making regulatory filings or obtaining regulatory approvals. Pre-filing disclosure requirements in the United States may im47
pede the efforts of a foreign issuer to access the U.S. market
Schedule B to the Securities Act, which spells out very limited disclosure requirements, governs foreign sovereign offerings.348 Despite
these minimal requirements, however, "a market practice has developed by which sovereign issuers generally provide additional information about their country, its history and political situation, foreign
relations, economic and financial information including balance of
payments, balance of trade and exchange rate policies, and external
debt service statistics. '349 This practice likely reflects two motivations:
minimizing the possibility of material omissions, which result in strict
liability,350 and assisting marketing by presenting the political and economic situation in as favorable a light as possible consistent with the
Rule 10b-5 standard of making no material misstatements or omis351
sions, in order to avoid fraud suits.
Finally, the application of multiple regulatory systems to a global
offering potentially subjects the issuer to suit in multiple jurisdictions.
The Supreme Court has recognized that an entity might have a "spe345 James D. Cox, Choice of Law Rules for International Securities Transactions?, 66 U.
Cin. L. Rev. 1179, 1180 (1998).
346 Randall v. Loftsgaarden, 478 U.S. 647, 655-56 (1986).
347 See Lee C. Buchheit, The Schedule B Alternative, Int'l Fin. L Rev., Jul. 1992, at 6,6
(explaining that foreign sovereigns may be reluctant to meet disclosure requirements mandated by United States).
348 Schedule B's disclosure requirements include, inter alia, the purpose of the offering,
the amount of debt outstanding, any history of prior default, and a schedule of government
revenues classified by source for the prior three years. Securities Act of 1933, 15 U.S.C.
§77aa, sched. B (1994).
349 Buchheit, supra note 347, at 6.
350 James Cox refers to this as "the law of half-truths." The minimum facts required by
Schedule B might only be half-truths, without supplementation by other information.
James D. Cox, Rethinking U.S. Securities Laws in the Shadow of International Regulatory
Competition, L. & Contemp. Probs., Autumn 1992, at 177, 192-93.
351 Securities Exchange Act of 1934 R. 10b-5.
[Vol. 76:1005
cial interest in limiting the fora in which it potentially could be subject
to suit. ' ' 352
Noting good reasons why a nation may want to avoid United
States law does not, however, establish that it should be allowed to do
so. Sections B and C of this Part address this question. It thus suffices
for now to point out that issuers may decide to forgo offering securities in the United States altogether because of the United States securities regime and United States procedure and litigation
practices.3 53 After Ferdinand Marcos was removed by a populist
revolution, the new Philippines government considered issuing Diaspora Bonds. "Just as the American Jews helped build a fledgling
Israel," one proponent explained, "Philippine-Americans can help rebuild this country by linking their pocketbooks to their hearts."3 54
However, the Philippine Government eventually decided against selling "Cory Bonds" to retail investors in the United States in light of the
need to comply with U.S. securities (including disclosure) requirements.3 55 Indeed, in October 2000, after discussions with the United
States regulatory authorities, India decided against offering a new Diaspora Bond, the India Millennium Deposit, in the United States. 35 6
352 Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v. Shute, 499 U.S. 585, 593 (1991). In this sense, an issuer
in a global offering is like the cruise ship with passengers from many countries: "Because a
cruise ship typically carries passengers from many locales, it is not unlikely that a mishap
on a cruise could subject the cruise line to litigation in several different fora." Id.
353 Of course, other issuers, like Israel, may accept American securities regulation and
offer SEC-registered Diaspora Bonds.
354 Anne Keegan, Coming to the Aid of Their Country: Filipinos in U.S. Join Forces to
Rebuild Homeland's Economy, Chi. Trib., Mar. 9, 1986, at 4.
355 Interview with Lee C. Buchheit, Legal Advisor to the Philippine Government, New
York, Mar. 20, 1999 (on file with the New York University Law Review); see also Aquino to
Visit U.S. in September, UPI, July 3, 1986, LEXIS, Nexis Library, UPI File (quoting President Corazon Aquino as saying "we are also studying the matter of possibly floating 'Cory
bonds' in the United States"). The Philippine decision to forgo a securities offering because of United States securities law and procedure is emblematic of one response foreign
issuers have to our regulatory regime: "Many foreign issuers, in fact, purposefully exclude
U.S.-based investors to avoid the application of U.S. securities laws." Stephen J.Choi &
Andrew T. Guzman, Portable Reciprocity: Rethinking the International Reach of Securities Regulation, 71 S. Cal. L. Rev. 903, 922 (1998). James Cox observes:
It is not an uncommon practice for bidders to avoid unwanted takeover regulations and their accompanying liability regimes, most notably those of the
United States, by excluding U.S.-based investors from its bid. Such a strategy
then raises the issue whether the excluded investors are harmed by the very
regulations that are intended for their benefit.
Cox, supra note 345, at 1180.
356 Sanyal & Krishnan, supra note 319; see also Banks Assure $5 B Mop-Up for IMD,
Econ. Times (India), Oct. 19, 2000, LEXIS, Economic Times File.
October 2001]
B.
DIASPORA BONDS
Choosing Law and Court: The Statist Approach
The United States securities laws apply to any offer of a security
using an instrumentality or means of interstate commerce. 3 7 The jurisdictional nexus is met quite easily in the case of the Resurgent India
Bonds, which were offered using interstate means. However, the requirement that investment vehicles under the scope of the U.S. regime
be "securities" creates the loophole that India sought to exploit in its
offering of Resurgent India Bonds within the United States.35 8 If an
offering does not involve a "security," the United States securities regime does not apply.
A homeland country could take either of two strategies to avoid
potential conflict with the laws of its diaspora's adopted countries:
First, it could comply fully with those laws; or, second, it could structure the transaction to avoid the application of those laws. Israel
adopted the former approach with its State of Israel Bonds, registering the instruments with the SEC, and complying with the relevant
requirements for the issuance of securities in the United States.35 9 India chose the second strategy and based its avoidance of United States
law on the argument that the Resurgent India Bonds, which are offered by its State Bank, are in fact bank certificates of deposit, not
securities, therefore escaping the application of the United States se36
curities regime.
Even though "bonds" are included in the list of instruments defined to be "securities" in Section 2 of the 1933 Securities Act,361 determining whether the Resurgent India Bonds actually constitute
securities requires further inquiry.362 Whether the Resurgent India
Bonds should be governed by the United States securities laws turns
on whether they fall within the scope of the strict definition of security. United States case law has made clear, through its grappling with
357 Securities Act of 1933 § 5, 15 U.S.C. § 77e (1994).
358 The Empire Strikes Back, Bus. India, Jul. 27, 1998, at 83 ("The RIB [Resurgent India
Bond] is a deposit scheme and not a bond, hence we need not register with the Securities
Exchange (SEC).") (quoting State Bank of India official).
359 See supra text accompanying note 303.
361 Securities Act of 1933 § 2, 15 U.S.C. § 7T (1994).
362 The Supreme Court has instructed us not to be formalistic in determining whether an
instrument is a security. In United Housing Foundation, Inc. v. Forman, 421 U.S. 837
(1975), the Supreme Court held that persons who acquired residential apartments in a
state-subsidized cooperative did not purchase securities even though their interests were
evidenced by shares of stock. In concluding that something called a "stock" was not necessarily a "security," the Court focused on the "economic realities" underlying the transaction: "Because securities transactions are economic in character Congress intended the
application of these statutes to turn on the economic realities underlying a transaction, and
not on the name appended thereto." Id. at 849.
[Vol. 76:1005
the issue of "notes," that simply falling literally within the Section 2
listed categories may not be enough for classification as a security and
application of the United States securities laws.
In Landreth Timber Co. v. Landreth,3 63 the Supreme Court held
that an instrument bearing the name "stock" is plainly a "security"
because it is negotiable, offers the possibility of capital appreciation,
and carries the right to dividends contingent on the profits of a business enterprise. However, in Reves v. Ernst & Young, 364 the Supreme
Court approached the question of whether an instrument bearing the
name "note" is a security in a very different manner. There, the Court
said that an instrument called a "note" is presumed to be a "security,"
yet that this presumption could be rebutted by a showing that the note
bears a strong "family resemblance" to one of the categories of instruments that is not considered a security. 365 The question in the instant
case is whether we should approach a "bond" in the manner we analyze "stocks" (i.e., using the narrow Landreth Timber test) or in the
manner we analyze "notes" (i.e., using the broader Reves test). In
Reves, the Court distinguished "note" from "stock" on the ground
that unlike "stock," "note" is "'a relatively broad term that encompasses instruments with widely varying characteristics, depending on
whether issued in a consumer context, as commercial paper, or in
some other investment context."' 366 The term "bond" may encompass a wide variety of instruments, some we would consider "securities," such as a corporate bond, and others we would not consider
"securities," such as a performance bond. 367 Because the word
"bond" itself, like "note," includes many instruments that are not securities, the Reves analysis seems more appropriate than the Landreth
Timber analysis.
Under Reves, we must first ask whether an instrument bears a
"family resemblance" to any of the types of instruments already held
not to be securities.3 68 This question is easy to answer for the Resur363 471 U.S. 681 (1985).
364 494 U.S. 56 (1990).
365
366
367
Id. at 67.
Id. at 62 (quoting Landreth Timber, 471 U.S. at 694).
Among the instruments called "bonds" listed under that term in Black's Law Dictionary, many are not securities. Black's Law Dictionary 178-81 (6th ed. 1990). In contrast, of the long list of instruments called "stocks" listed under that term in Black's,
virtually all are securities. Id. at 1415-19.
368 The examination of whether an instrument bears a strong "family resemblance" to
an instrument previously held not to be a security is measured using four factors: (1) motivation; (2) plan of distribution; (3) reasonable expectations of the investing public; and (4)
the existence of an alternative regulatory regime or some other risk-reducing factor.
Reves, 494 U.S. at 66-67. If no family resemblance is found, then one must examine
whether a new class of instruments should be added to the list of instruments that are not
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
gent India Bonds because foreign bank certificates of deposit have
previously been held not to be securities in certain cases. In Marine
Bank v. Weaver,369 the Supreme Court held that a certificate of deposit purchased from a federally regulated bank was not a security
under the 1934 Securities Exchange Act.370 The Court reasoned that
since the holders of bank certificates of deposit are "abundantly pro-
tected under the federal banking laws," it is unnecessary to subject
issuers of bank certificates of deposit to liability under the antifraud
provisions of the federal securities laws.371 Federal appeals courts
have extended the Marine Bank holding to certificates of deposit is-
sued by a foreign bank. In Wolf v. Banco Nacional de Merico '72 the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a certificate of deposit denominated in Mexican pesos and sold to a United
States resident by a Mexican bank (Banamex) was not a "security" for
purposes of the federal securities acts.373 The Ninth Circuit reasoned
that foreign banking regulation could protect an investor just as well
as United States federal banking regulation. 374 Referencing Weaver,
it concluded that "when a bank is sufficiently well regulated that there
is virtually no risk that insolvency will prevent it from repaying the
holder of one of its certificates of deposit in full, the certificate is not a
security.
'375
securities; this examination is again conducted on the basis of the same four factors. Id. at
67.
369 455 U.S. 551 (1982).
370 Id. at 558-59.
371 Id. at 559. The Court, however, instructed that each certificate of deposit "must be
analyzed and evaluated on the basis of the content of the instruments in question, the
purposes intended to be served, and the factual setting as a whole." Id. at 560 n.1.
372 739 F.2d 1458 (9th Cir. 1984). 'he Fifth Circuit has since followed the IMblfholding,
as has a later Ninth Circuit case. West v. Multibanco Comermex, S.A., 807 F.2d 820 (9th
Cir. 1987); Grass v. Credito Mexicano, S.A., 797 F.2d 220 (5th Cir. 1986); Callejo v.
Bancomer S.A., 764 F.2d 1101 (5th Cir. 1985).
373 Wolf, 739 F.2d at 1463-64.
374 Id.
375 Id. at 1463. For all of the judicial assurances of "abundant protection," the investors
in the Banamex certificates of deposit lost a good deal of money, without any clear hope of
recouping their losses through litigation in Mexican court. It seems likely that the losses
did not arise from any fraud on the part of Banamex but rather from adverse economic
events in Mexico, so recovery for the losses would be inappropriate. However, the facts of
Wolf call into question the courts' assurances that foreign banking laws can serve just as
well as American laws. The appraisal that there is "virtually no risk of insolvency" proved
cold comfort for the investors in Banamex CDs. Instead of insolvency, holders of the foreign-currency-denominated CD faced an equally disastrous event: devaluation. The holders of these peso-denominated CDs received the peso amount in full, but due to the
intervening peso devaluation, when converted into dollars, the principal returned was
worth about half of the original investment. Id. at 1459.
[Vol. 76:1005
Resurgent India Bonds resemble foreign bank certificates of deposit in a number of ways. A certificate of deposit is defined as a
"receipt for the deposit of funds in a bank. ' 376 Certificates of deposit
can offer interest and may be negotiable. 377 The Offer Document describes the Resurgent India Bonds as "bank instruments representing
foreign currency denominated deposits in India. ' '378 They permit
"Non-Resident Indians" to "save and remit funds to India. ' '379 Like
time certificates of deposit, they are evidenced by a certificate that
entitles the holder to receive the funds, with interest, at maturity.
Also, like certificates of deposit, the Resurgent India Bonds were distributed through commercial banks, not underwriters, and the State
Bank of India sought and obtained regulatory clearance for the instruments from some state bank authorities. 380 However, unlike the
Banamex CDs, the Resurgent India Bonds are foreign-currency-denominated bank instruments and thus are not subject to local currency
risk. In order to qualify as certificates of deposit that are not "securities," the State Bank of India would need to demonstrate to the
United States courts that "abundant protection" was available
381
through Indian banking regulation.
C. Choosing Law and Court: The Cosmopolitan Market Approach
Avoiding the United States regulatory regime by this definitional
twist in order to defer to a foreign regulatory regime will strike many
as unsatisfactory. Our faith in the domestic securities regulatory regime is very strong 382 in comparison to our limited confidence in foreign antifraud, securities, and banking laws. But what if an individual
agrees to litigate disputes arising out of an investment under foreign
law in a foreign court? Should that choice of law and forum be
respected by U.S. courts? The use of choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses in Diaspora Bonds may be another means by which
homelands may avoid the United States securities laws. This section
will address whether United States courts are likely to find these
376
Glenn G. Munn, Encyclopedia of Banking and Finance 173 (F.L. Garcia ed., 8th ed.
1983).
Id.
The Instruments "constitute obligations of SBI Central Office, Mumbai, India and
are not the obligations of any foreign office of SBI or its subsidiaries." State Bank of
India, Offer Document for Resurgent India Bonds 1 (1998), available at http://sbi.co.in/
offerdoc.htm.
379 Id.
380 US Regulator Clears Resurgent Bonds, Bus. Standard (India), Aug. 1, 1998, at 12
(noting that New York State regulators had cleared offering of Resurgent India Bonds).
381 See Marine Bank, 455 U.S. at 559; see also supra note 371 and accompanying text.
382 James Cox refers to it as "self satisfaction." Cox, supra note 343, at 150.
377
378
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
1079
clauses binding under existing precedent, which is consistent with the
cosmopolitan approach. Part IV.D will then look at how the diaspora
model could help courts reach a hybrid result that satisfies the interests of both investors and homelands.
This Section first develops the market approach, which is consistent with at least one form of cosmopolitanism. The market approach's focus on efficiency, a utilitarian criterion that ignores state
boundaries, has a cosmopolitan flavor. Its cosmopolitanism can be
seen in that most of the efficiency gains from the privatization of the
securities laws may be received by foreign states, not the United
States (though the United States should stand to benefit as well). The
market approach is not the only cosmopolitan approach, nor necessarily the one that would be the most popular among cosmopolitan
scholars. Some might prefer a securities regime that was guided by
Rawls's maximizing-the-minimum principle or some other principle of
383
distributive justice
Adherents of the market approach can find support in recent case
law enforcing private choices of law and forum selections. The Supreme Court has established a jurisprudence strongly favoring forum
selection and choice of law,384 though it is unclear whether it would
extend that partiality in securities cases outside the arbitration context. Despite this ambiguity, the circuit courts have nevertheless
forged ahead during the last decade, upholding forum-selection and
choice-of-law clauses in securities cases against Lloyd's insurance entities.385 While the reasoning of the Lloyd's cases is controversial, 33
the holdings in these cases offer strong support for enforcing the
choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses in the terms of the Resurgent India Bonds. Allowing investors to opt out of the United States
securities regime, however, radically transforms our regulatory system
from one that presumes its unvarying usefulness to one that relies on
investor rationality.387
1.
FacilitatingInternationalTransactions: Bremen and Scherk
The Court has recognized the utility of choice-of-law and forumselection clauses in international transactions. In The Bremen v.
383 See supra notes 208-11 and accompanying text.
384 See infra Part IV.C.1.
385 See infra Part IV.C2.
387 It could be argued that in choosing a disclosure-based system rather than a qualitative assessment-based system, the Securities Acts themselves are founded on the paradigm
of a rational investor.
1080
[Vol. 76:1005
Zapata Off-Shore Co.,388 an American oil company, seeking to evade
the contractual choice of an English forum, and, by implication, English law, 38 9 filed a suit in admiralty in United States court against the
German corporation which it had hired to tow its rig to the Adriatic
Sea.390 The Supreme Court held that the choice-of-forum clause was
binding, notwithstanding the possibility that the English court would
enforce exculpatory provisions in the contract that an American court
would refuse to enforce. 391 It rested its holding on a desire to promote international commerce: "The expansion of American business
and industry will hardly be encouraged if, notwithstanding solemn
contracts, we insist on a parochial concept that all disputes must be
resolved under our laws and in our courts. '' 392 The Court eschewed
such parochialism: "We cannot have trade and commerce in world
markets and international waters exclusively on our terms, governed
'393
by our laws, and resolved in our courts.
In Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 3 94 the Court extended the
Bremen analysis to the securities context, arguing that such choice-oflaw and forum-selection clauses helped create certainty otherwise absent in international transactions. 395 In Scherk, an American company sued a German seller in United States court for violating the
Securities Exchange Act.396 The Supreme Court held the American
company to its agreement to arbitrate disputes arising under the sale
agreement before a Paris tribunal.397 The remarkable fact about the
Court's decision in Scherk is that it is precisely contrary to a statutory
mandate. Section 14 of the Securities Act voids any clause that seeks
388 407 U.S. 1 (1972).
389 As Judge Goodwin pointed out in an en banc opinion for the Ninth Circuit: "While
the contract in Bremen did not contain a choice of law clause, the Supreme Court explicitly
recognized that the forum selection clause also acted as a choice of law clause." Richards
v. Lloyd's of London, 135 F.3d 1289, 1293 n.1 (9th Cir. 1998). Judge Goodwin cited a
footnote in Bremen that made the point:
[W]hile the contract here did not specifically provide that the substantive law
of England should be applied, it is the general rule in English courts that the
parties are assumed, absent contrary indication, to have designated the forum
with the view that it should apply its own law.... It is therefore reasonable to
conclude that the forum clause was also an effort to obtain certainty as to the
applicable substantive law.
Bremen, 407 U.S. at 13 n.15.
390 Bremen, 407 U.S. at 1.
391 Id.
392
Id. at 9.
393
Id.
396
U.S. 506 (1974).
Id. at 516.
Id. at 506.
397
Id.
394 417
395
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
to waive compliance with the Act.3 98 But the Court in Scherk had
good reason to ignore this mandate: Congress had indicated in the
Arbitration Act that arbitration clauses should be enforced. As Ninth
Circuit Judge Noonan explained the decision later, "[w]ith two federal
statutes in conflict, the considerations of international commerce
tipped the balance. '399 Notably, the Supreme Court itself did not offer such clear reasoning.
2. Sending Securities Disputes Abroad." The Lloyd's Cases
Seven circuit courts have extended the Scherk holding to international securities claims outside the arbitration context. The issue has
been raised by American investors (caUed "Names") in the Lloyd's
insurance market who had agreed to underwrite insurance in England
backed by a commitment to pay any losses from their personal assets
"'down to their last cufflinks.'" 400 When faced with calls to make
good on that promise, the Names sued in federal courts all across the
country, alleging securities law violations on the ground that Lloyd's
had offered the investments without adequate disclosure of the risks
involved. And they sued despite the presence of forum-selection and
choice-of-law clauses in their underwriting agreements with
Lloyd's.4 1 The federal circuit courts faced with the issue have all held
the forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses to be enforceable. 402
The courts have upheld the agreement to bring claims in England
under English law on the ground that England offers adequate remedies for defrauded investors and thus will vindicate the U.S. public
policy against fraud.403
Securities Act of 1933 § 14, 15 U.S.C. § 77n (1994).
Richards v. Lloyd's of London, 107 F.3d 1422, 1427 (9th Cir. 1997).
Allen v. Lloyd's of London, 94 F.3d 923, 926 (4th Cir. 1996).
Id. at 928.
4M See Lipcon v. Underwriters at Lloyd's, London, 148 F.3d 1285 (11th Cir. 1998);
Richards v. Lloyd's of London, 135 F.3d 1289 (9th Cir. 1998) (en banc); Haynsworth v. The
Corporation, 121 F.3d 956 (5th Cir. 1997); Allen, 94 F.3d 923; Bonny v. Soe'y of Uoyd's, 3
F.3d 156 (7th Cir. 1993); Roby v. Corp. of Lloyd's, 996 F.2d 1353 (2d Cir. 1993); Riley v.
Kingsley Underwriting Agencies, Ltd., 969 F.2d 953 (10th Cir. 1992); see also Shell v. R.W.
Sturge, Ltd., 55 F.3d 1227, 1228 (6th Cir. 1995) (displacing state securities law claims).
403 The Ninth Circuit's en banc decision illustrates the reasoning employed by courts in
reaching this conclusion. The court began by discerning a Supreme Court mandate, enunciated in Bremen, to "enforce choice of law and choice of forum clauses in cases of 'freely
negotiated private international agreement[s]."' Richards v. Lloyd's of London, 135 F.3d
1289, 1293 (9th Cir. 1998) (quoting The Bremen v. Zapata Off-Shore Co., 407 U.S. 1, 12
(1972)). The Ninth Circuit declared that the antiwaiver provisions in the Securities Acts
did not provide an exception to this rule. Id. The court noted that the Supreme Court in
Bremen had contemplated that a forum-selection clause could conflict with relevant statutes. The court repeated the Bremen Court's words: "A contractual choice-of-forum
clause should be held unenforceable if enforcement would contravene a strong public pol398
399
400
401
[Vol. 76:1005
However, the Lloyd's cases' extension of judicial partiality to forum selection and choice of law beyond the international arbitration
context is dubious. As Judge Sidney Thomas's cogent dissent from the
Ninth Circuit's en banc decision in Richards points out, the basic error
in the court's analyses is that, in applying the policy-weighing approach of Bremen, the court "displaces Congress' specific statutory
directive" prohibiting waiver of the United States securities laws. 404
Policy weighing by a court is appropriate where, as in Bremen, there
are no statutory directives at issue or where, as in Scherk, there are
two opposite statutory directives at issue. The Ninth Circuit, like the
other circuits, relied on the Supreme Court's opaque opinion in
Scherk, which did not clarify that the only basis on which the Court
could refuse to apply the antiwaiver provisions of the Securities Acts
was the contrary statutory command of the Arbitration Act.
icy of the forum in which suit is brought, whether declared by statute or by judicial decision." Id. (quoting Bremen, 407 U.S. at 15). The court found support for its application of
the Bremen holding to the securities dispute before it, noting that, in a different case, "the
Supreme Court explicitly relied on Bremen in a case involving a securities transaction." Id.
The Ninth Circuit then turned to the application of Bremen. As a preliminary step,
because the Bremen decision only applies to international transactions, the court inquired
whether the contract at issue was "international." Id. at 1294. Having established that an
international agreement was at stake, the court then asked whether there were grounds for
refusing to enforce forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses. Id. The court observed that
in Bremen, the Supreme Court had identified three grounds for repudiating a forum-selection clause:
[Flirst, if the inclusion of the clause in the agreement was the product of fraud
or overreaching; second, if the party wishing to repudiate the clause would
effectively be deprived of his day in court were the clause enforced; and third,
"if enforcement would contravene a strong public policy of the forum in which
suit is brought."
Id. (quoting Bremen, 407 U.S. at 15).
Like the other courts that had considered the issue in the Lloyd's disputes, the Ninth Circuit in Richards found the third ground the most worrisome, but concluded in the end that
enforcement of the forum-selection and choice-of-law clauses would not offend American
public policy. In analyzing the public policy issues at stake, the court again turned to the
forever-twinned cases of Bremen and Scherk. First, the court noted the strong public policy reasons to enforce the parties' "'solemn agreement."' Id. at 1295 (quoting Scherk v.
Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U.S. 506,517 n.11 (1974)). It cited the Supreme Court's desire not
to be chauvinistic about United States law: "To require that American standards of fairness must ...govern the controversy demeans the standards of justice elsewhere in the
world, and unnecessarily exalts the primacy of United States law over the laws of other
countries." Id. (quoting Scherk, 417 U.S. at 517 n.11, internal quotations omitted). The
court found that English law and English courts provided "reasonable recourse" to the
Names for any fraud or misrepresentation. Id. at 1296. The court repeated its observation
made two decades earlier that it was "hardly in a position to call the Queen's Bench a
kangaroo court." Id. English remedies, in the court's opinion, offered adequate substitutes for United States securities laws. See id.
404 Richards, 135 F.3d at 1297 (Thomas, J., dissenting).
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
Furthermore, there is reason to think that enforcing the forumselection and choice-of-law clauses violates the public policy Congress
sought to further by enacting the Securities Acts.40 s The remedies
available through English courts were precisely the ones that Congress had found insufficient before enacting the Securities Acts.4 0
Judge Noonan makes this point in his opinion for the panel in
Richards, subsequently withdrawn and reversed en banc: "We do not
believe that we should turn back the clock to 1929 or introduce caveat
emptor as the rule governing the solicitation in the United States of
investments in securities by residents of the United States." 40 7
Despite their fragile intellectual foundation, the Lloyd's cases are
good law in the seven circuits in which they were decided. Moreover,
prolonged Congressional inaction in responding to these cases with a
clarifying statute lends some authority to their interpretations of the
law. While a recent commentator holds up the possibility that "[t]he
Lloyd's cases might . . . be limited only to Lloyd's use of such
clauses," 4 8 it is hard to find a justification for this limitation in these
cases themselves. 4°9
405 James D. Cox et al., Securities Regulation: Cases and Materials 3-8 (2d ed. 1997)
(describing Securities Acts as prompted by Congressional concern-perhaps exaggerated-over market abuses). James Cox worries about the "balkanization" of United States
capital markets into U.S.-regulated and non-U.S.-regulated markets, with "private agreements driv[ing] out wiser and more broadly formulated public law." Cox, supra note 345, at
1187.
406 One commentator notes:
When Congress enacted the securities laws in the 1930s, it was perfectly av-are
that investors had available common lav remedies such as fraud and misrepresentation. Indeed, one important objective of the securities laws was to make
it easier for investors to prosecute claims by relaxing the scienter (knowledge)
and causation requirements of the common law remedies. To conclude that
the policy of the US securities laws can be vindicated by remanding American
investors to a forum where only such common law remedies are available is
therefore to miss much of the point that Congress was trying to make when it
enacted the securities laws in the first place.
Lee Buchheit, Choice of Law Clauses and Regulatory Statutes, Int'l Fin. L Rev., Mar.
1996, at 11, 12.
407 Richards v. Lloyd's of London, 107 F.3d 1422, 1429 (9th Cir. 1997); see also Jennifer
M. Eck, Note, Turning Back the Clock: A Judicial Return to Caveat Emptor for U.S.
Investors in Foreign Markets, 19 N.C. J. Int'l L & Com. Reg. 313 (1994) (concluding that
"the Supreme Court did not intend for its decisions enforcing international arbitration
clauses to result in United States investors losing their statutory claims under the 1933 and
1934 Acts").
408 Jon A. Jacobson, Note, Your Place or Mine: The Enforceability of Choice-of-Law
Forum Clauses in International Securities Contracts, 8 Duke J.Comp. & Int'l L 469, 509
(1998).
409 Courts have already begun to apply the Lloyd's holdings in other contexts. See, eg.,
Batchelder v. Kawamoto, 147 F.3d 915, 919 (9th Cir. 1998) (enforcing Japanese choice-oflaw clause in shareholder derivative action, stating, "California's interest would not be defeated by the application of Japanese law to Batchelder's claim....The fact that Japanese
[Vol. 76:1005
The limited remedies available in English law did not prevent the
seven circuit courts from sending the United States plaintiffs to England to argue their grievances. The Second Circuit made this explicit
in its decision, expressing its willingness to enforce a choice-of-law and
forum-selection clause even if "the foreign law or procedure ...[is]
different or less favorable than that of the United States. '410 It wrote
that an agreement's submission to English courts must be enforced
"even if that agreement tacitly includes the forfeiture of some
claims." 41 ' It seems likely that a court would hold that India, with a
common-law tradition similar to that of England, would also provide
adequate investor protections under the Lloyd's cases theory.412
But these analyses only take us so far. The positive analysis of
how courts (and implicitly, and perhaps more importantly, the SEC)
are likely to treat instruments like the Resurgent India Bonds does
not resolve the more difficult question of whether instruments like the
Resurgent India Bonds should be tolerated. The next Section turns to
the policies underlying the securities-regulation regime and one important recent suggestion for its reform.
3. The Market Approach to Securities Regulation of Law and
Economics
The Lloyd's cases offer a startling possibility: investors choosing
to divest themselves of the protections of the United States securities
laws in their international investments. This seemingly radical result
is broadly consistent with powerful recent scholarship on reforming
the international securities regulation regime. Scholars seeking to create a more efficient international securities regulatory system have
suggested ways to reform the system so that an international offering
law may differ in this regard from California law does not necessarily signify that application of Japanese law would contravene California's public policy"); Frietsch v. Refco, Inc.,
56 F.3d 825 (7th Cir. 1995) (dismissing plaintiffs' federal securities fraud case on ground
that forum-selection clause in plaintiffs' investment contracts made Germany exclusive
venue for any suit arising out of contracts); Lobatto v. Berney, 98 Civ. 1984, 1999 U.S. Dist.
LEXIS 13224, at *17 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 26, 1999) (dismissing claims against defendant investment company because of forum-selection clause that required arbitration of disputes, subject to exclusive jurisdiction of English courts); P.T. Adimitra Rayapratama v. Bankers
Trust Co., 95 Civ. 0786, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11961, at *9 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 16, 1995) (dismissing RICO and commodities claims because English law provides adequate remedies to
vindicate plaintiffs substantive rights and protect U.S. public policies).
410 Roby v. Corp. of Lloyd's, 996 F.2d 1353, 1363 (2d Cir. 1993).
411
412
Id. at 1360-61.
This assumes that any Indian sovereign entities that are sued in U.S. courts are required to waive any sovereign immunity they may have in Indian courts before the suit is
dismissed in favor of Indian court. Cf. Jota v. Texaco, Inc., 157 F.3d 153, 155 (2d Cir. 1998)
(holding that dismissal for forum non conveniens and comity was erroneous in absence of
condition requiring oil company to submit to Ecuadorean jurisdiction).
DIASPORA BONDS
October 2001]
1035
would be governed by the laws of only one jurisdiction. Roberta
Romano, for example, endorses a system whereby "[floreign issuers
selling shares in the United States could opt out of the federal securities laws and choose those of another nation... or those of a U.S.
,,413 Steven Choi and Andrew Guzman propose a similar
state ..
reform of the international securities regime whereby "issuers may select the law of any participating country regardless of the physical location of the securities transaction." 414 Under their proposal, "[a]
Japanese company, for example, could choose German law to cover its
securities offerings within the United States and all other participating
jurisdictions.
' 415
Merritt Fox reaches a similar conclusion with respect
to the application of the disclosure requirements in international seshould be the exclusive regulator
curities offerings: "[E]ach country
'416
nationality.
its
of
issuers
of all
These scholars are concerned primarily with the deadweight
losses417 and other inefficiencies that arise from overregulation. A
market-oriented approach, such as that offered by Professor Romano,
allows investors and issuers to select the appropriate regulatory
scheme for any issuance. 418 Professor Romano notes that there is little concern that investors may find themselves forced into accepting a
foreign choice of law or forum against their wishes: "[G]iven the multiplicity of investment choices, securities transactions are not adhesion
contracts.
'419
Market forces would adjust the price of the security to reflect the
choice of regulatory regime. If an issuer chose the law of a jurisdiction with little protection for investors, rational investors would pay a
lower price for that security: "As long as investors were informed of
the issuer's choice-of-law and choice-of-forum selections, they would
be able to price their ability to obtain relief for securities violaRomano, supra note 299, at 2362.
Choi & Guzman, supra note 355, at 907.
415 Id. at 908.
416 Fox, supra note 344, at 2504.
417 Deadweight losses are the reduction in consumer and producer surplus resulting
from the restriction of output to less than the optimum efficient level that would prevail
under conditions of perfect competition. See Christopher Pass et al., Collins Dictionary of
Economics 111 (2d ed. 1993).
418 The market approach (and its variations) advocated by recent scholarship represents
a shift from the current mandatory securities-regulation regime. The current regime rests
on investors making decisions after receiving full disclosure about the potential investment,
whereas the market approach rests on investors making decisions after receiving information on the law that would apply and the courts that would hear cases. The market approach increases the number of variables that the investor must review in making the
investment decision.
419 Romano, supra note 299, at 2407.
413
414
[Vol. 76:1005
tions ... .,,420 The choice of law will affect the price of the security in
another way: The fact that the issuer may be subjected to only one
jurisdiction's laws and courts may help reduce the costs associated
with offering securities internationally and should therefore reduce
421
(perhaps imperceptibly) the cost of the security.
This analysis requires a certain degree of faith in the free market,
especially in the proposition that it is characterized by rational, wellinformed investors. 422 Is this the nature of the market for Diaspora
Bonds? This market appears to be characterized by two forces that
push in opposite directions. First, a diaspora is more likely to be well
informed about its home country than the average investor. They may
have first-hand experience with the homeland's system of justice and
with the possibility of redress for fraud. At the same time, however,
the diaspora may be guided by its feelings of loyalty to its home country, rather than dispassionate analysis. Like all loyalties, this loyalty
may be blinding. 423 Familiarity does not always breed financial sophistication; diasporan people may need protection from their own
homelands' financial schemes.
D.
Choosing Law and Court: The Diaspora Model's
Hybrid Approach
The diaspora model would offer a hybrid approach to the choiceof-law and forum-selection questions, seeking to satisfy the desire to
facilitate capital raising by foreign sovereigns but allowing for policing
Diaspora Bond issuances to protect unwitting investors. The hybrid
approach builds from both the statist and cosmopolitan market approaches. 424 To the extent that the securities regime seeks to protect
420 Id. at 2424. Choi and Guzman write: "Rational investors with information on...
different types of regimes will... discount the price they are willing to pay for securities
based on the increased risk of fraud and other opportunistic behavior." Choi & Guzman,
supra note 355, at 950. See also Cox, supra note 343, at 158 (noting that "securities on the
market which enjoy an overall lower likelihood of abusive practices will ex ante trade at
prices slightly higher than those of less regulated markets").
421 The Supreme Court offered similar, efficient-markets-based reasoning in Carnival
Cruise: "[I]t stands to reason that passengers who purchase tickets containing a forum
clause... benefit in the form of reduced fares reflecting the savings that the cruise line
enjoys by limiting the fora in which it may be sued." Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v. Shute,
499 U.S. 585, 594 (1991).
422 Professor Romano herself relies on the "sophistication of institutional investors" to
help price securities governed by foreign laws. Romano, supra note 299, at 2366.
423 See Christina Whitman, Whose Loyalties?, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 1266, 1276 (1993) (book
review) (observing how national loyalty can be blinding even to author writing on loyalty).
424 It is not necessary to adopt an "all-or-nothing" approach to the application of one
jurisdiction's regulatory regime to an international transaction. Cf. Robert W. Hillman,
Cross-Border Investment, Conflict of Laws, and Privatization of Securities Law, 55 Law &
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
the proper functioning of the general securities market,4 25 it seems
appropriate to allow territorial sovereigns to enforce that regime for
the common good of that society. At the same time, however, to the
extent that the securities regime seeks to protect an individual
diasporan investor, the diaspora model suggests that the principle of
self-reliance (associated with the market mechanism) should be paramount. Thus, in the case of the Resurgent India Bonds, courts should
enforce the forum-selection and choice-of-lav clauses sending private
litigants to Indian court and Indian law, but, at the same time, permit
the SEC (and state regulators) to sue the State Bank of India for any
violations of United States securities laws. That is, the diasporan investor in Resurgent India Bonds would forgo a private cause of action
in United States court, but American authorities would retain the
right to enforce the United States securities regime.
This approach can be justified on contractarian grounds. Since
the explicit and obvious terms of the Resurgent India Bond include a
waiver of the protection of United States law and United States
courts, it is appropriate to enforce against the investor the bargain she
struck.4 26 She should lose her private right of action in United States
court and be left to fight her case in an Indian court under Indian law.
But it would not be appropriate to hold the SEC to a bargain it never
accepted. As international lawyer and scholar Lee Buchheit notes:
"[T]he conventional wisdom [is] that governing law clauses cannot
shield a party from enforcement actions by the regulators." 42 7 Thus,
the SEC could act if necessary on behalf of the public interest in a
securities market free of fraud against the State Bank of India.
The diaspora model's hybrid approach has the virtue that it respects the simultaneously public and private character of the United
Contemp. Probs. 331,354 (1992) (challenging "prevailing unitary view of the securities acts
as public law not amenable to choice of law").
425
This latter interest has been called "the foundation for the United States financial
markets and business community." Roby v. Corp. of Lloyd's, 996 F.2d 1353, 1364-65 (2d
Cir. 1993).
426 Professors Paul Carrington and Paul Haagen take issue with the Supreme Court's
reliance on freedom of contract to support choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses, arguing that freedom of contract can often be used by the powerful to exploit the weak. Paul
D. Carrington & Paul H. Haagen, Contract and Jurisdiction, 1996 Sup. Ct. Rev. 331, 33339; see generally Michael J. Trebilcock, External Critiques of Laissez-Faire Contract Values, in The Fall and Rise of Freedom of Contract 78 (F.H. Buckley ed., 1999) (describing
major critiques of freedom of contract). In the case of Diaspora Bonds, this concern seems
less compelling, as potential investors in Diaspora Bonds, however weak they may be,
seem unlikely to be forced into parting with their money despite their wish to receive the
protections of the American securities laws in any investment. Perhaps the more likely
difficulty is the lack of sophistication or diligence on the part of the diaspora investor,
resulting in her not reading or comprehending the choice-of-law and -forum clauses.
427 Buchheit, supra note 406, at 11.
[Vol. 76:1005
States securities laws.428 The private aspect of the securities lawsprotecting the individual investors in any particular security-may be
properly the subject of choice-of-law/forum-selection clauses that eschew those protections in favor of foreign ones. The public aspectprotecting the market from predatory issuers-may be safeguarded by
a vigilant regulatory body.
The bifurcation of the securities laws into public and private may
strike long-time observers of the securities regime as odd. Historically, American scholars classified the securities laws as "public" law,
thereby denying the possibility of arbitration or choice of law with
respect to the securities regime.429 However, the securities laws' classification as pure public law has been eroded through the Supreme
Court's willingness to arbitrate securities disputes. 430 The hybrid approach suggests that there is a private aspect to this "public" law, evident in the private causes of action that can be brought to vindicate
individuals' legal rights. Thus, the innovation here is to recognize the
securities law as having both public and private purposes, and to separate the two neatly through the entity that has the right of actioneither the federal or state attorney general acting through the regulatory agencies or the private individual. Admittedly, that separation is
less than perfect. It is conceivable that private actions may be brought
to vindicate broader public harms (as is the case in much civil rights
litigation), and that public actions be brought to vindicate only private
harms, as in the case of agency capture by powerful interest groups.
Adopting the hybrid approach does not require Congressional action, only a subtle reinterpretation of the Lloyd's holdings. Under
this reinterpretation, the choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses
would effectively limit the plaintiff to actions in the foreign court and
under foreign law, but they would not annul the requirement that the
foreign issuer comply with United States securities regulation. A
country planning on issuing a Diaspora Bond would draft appropriate
disclosure statements meeting the limited requirements of Schedule B
as well as providing any other information that might be material to
428 In an early article presaging the next decade of thinking, Robert Hillman argues that
"[s]ecurities law is neither wholly public nor wholly private, but is instead at times public,
at times private, and at times a curious blend of the two." Hillman, supra note 424, at 343.
429 Romano, supra note 299, at 2423.
430 Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Express, 490 U.S. 477, 477 (1989); Shearson/
Am. Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220, 220-21 (1987); see also Romano, supra note
299, at 2423 ("The distinction between public and private law is arcane, and has largely
been undone by the Supreme Court in the securities context through its validation of arbitration clauses to resolve disputes, reversing the prior convention that considered arbitration inappropriate for public, as opposed to private, law subjects.").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
an investment decision. 431 The country would file a registration statement including that disclosure with the SEC. In order to gain confidence that the choice-of-law and choice-of-forum clauses would be
upheld in United States court, a procedure might be crafted whereby
a country planning to issue a Diaspora Bond would attempt to satisfy
the SEC that that country's laws and courts offered adequate investor
protection. While the SEC's assessment of the adequacy of the foreign substitute would not bind any court facing this issue later, as in
the case of no-action letters, 432 it would nevertheless have persuasive
authority. 433 If the issuer faced a private securities action in United
States court arising out of its Diaspora Bonds, it would seek to dismiss
on the ground of the choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses. The
country would still need to establish to the court that its law and procedure offered fair and adequate substitutes for the United States regulatory regime 4 34 but its argument would be strengthened by a prior
435
SEC determination to that effect.
The hybrid approach comes at the cost of private causes of action
in United States courts, upon which "American law relies so heavily." 436 However, because United States investors have conceded
their domestic causes of action in certain offerings, the SEC may be
especially vigilant with such offerings. Without such increased vigilance, investor inability to sue in the United States could lead to a
lower rate of compliance with United States securities laws and a concomitantly higher risk of fraud. An SEC enforcement action brought
in a case involving Diaspora Bonds would pit sovereign against sovereign in United States court. With enforcement now in the hands of
the government and potential defendants in any actions being sovereign entities, enforcement decisions might be subject to political calculations. For example, the SEC might be reluctant to prosecute
431
Complying with the securities offering regime would be unnecessary where the in-
strument being offered is not a security, as in the case of certain bank certificates of deposit. See supra text accompanying notes 357-59.
432 See Donna M. Nagy, Judicial Reliance on Regulatory Interpretations in SEC NoAction Letters: Current Problems and a Proposed Framework, 83 Cornell L Rev. 921,
936-38 (1998) (describing SEC no-action letters).
433 Harold S. Bloomenthal & Samuel Wolff, Securities and Federal Corporate Law
§ 24:81, at 24-174 (2000) (describing degree of deference accorded by courts to no-action
letters); Nagy, supra note 432, at 923-26 (noting that although no-action letters do not
constitute binding rulings, courts frequently rely upon them in their decisions).
434 See supra text accompanying note 403.
435 A refinement to the diaspora model's hybrid approach would maintain the existing
regulation of market professionals (e.g., underwriters and brokerldealers) involved in the
offering of Diaspora Bonds. Professor Romano adopts this feature of the current regulatory landscape in her market approach to securities regulation. Romano, supra note 299,
at 2419-28.
436 Carrington & Haagen, supra note 426, at 375.
[Vol. 76:1005
vigorously a strategically important country that had defrauded investors. At the same time, however, the high profile of such offerings
and their small number might lead to greater regulatory scrutiny. In
McMahon and Rodriguez de Quijas, where the Supreme Court enforced the arbitration of securities claims, the Court found comfort in
the fact that the SEC had authority to oversee and regulate arbitration
procedures.437 While not offering this extent of procedural over-
sight,438 the hybrid approach offers the possibility of SEC oversight of
United States offerings of Diaspora Bonds through enforcement
actions.
In any event, even despite the greater risk of fraud due to the loss
of the private attorney general, the knowing agreement to resolve in a
foreign court under foreign law any private grievances that may arise
is precisely the kind of bargain that should be enforced by courts. The
compensatory and deterrent values of private litigation can be vindicated, though admittedly not as easily for United States plaintiffs as in
American courts, through private litigation in foreign courts, especially if those courts have been adjudged to provide adequate remedies.439 This would, of course, require that the issuer of the Diaspora
Bonds not be entitled to any sovereign immunity in the courts of its
own country.
The hybrid approach would not fully immunize the foreign sovereign from private suits related to the instruments in the United States.
Because of its underlying reliance on contract, the hybrid approach
would not bar litigation by parties who did not agree to a foreign governing law and forum or who did agree only through fraudulent inducement. Thus, a potential investor who claimed that he was not
permitted to buy the Resurgent India Bonds would still be able to sue
the State Bank of India and other banks for violating United States
laws or regulations against national origin discrimination. 440
What are the benefits of this approach for countries issuing Diaspora Bonds? Perhaps most importantly, they remove a serious risk of
regulation by the United States securities regime-an aggressive
437 Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Express, 490 U.S. 477, 483 (1989); Shearson/
Am. Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220, 231-34 (1987).
438 It would offend comity for United States courts to exercise such a supervisory role,
and the Second Circuit, at least, has resisted it. See In re Union Carbide Corp. Gas Plant
Disaster, 809 F.2d 195, 204-05 (2d Cir. 1987) (refusing Union Carbide's request that United
States court monitor Indian judicial proceedings to ensure their compliance with American
due process standards).
439 Cf. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U.S. 614, 635
(1985) ("The importance of the private damages remedy, however, does not compel the
conclusion that it may not be sought outside an American court.").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
plaintiffs' bar that can exact settlement value out of even nonmeritorious claims. Recall that the Resurgent India Bonds denominated in
pounds sterling and deutsche marks permit suits in the United Kingdom and Germany, respectively, because India evidently believes that
these jurisdictions are less tilted in favor of securities plaintiffs. The
United States pro-plaintiff procedural rules described above are less
threatening when only the regulator can sue; concerns arising from
contingency fees, class actions, overly aggressive discovery and abusive litigation are thereby alleviated.
Hybridity, of course, reflects the nature of diasporas.441 Often
neither fully assimilating to a new way of life nor fully transplanting
their old ways of life, diasporas hybridize the cultures and norms of
their homelands and their adopted lands. The hybrid model offers the
possibility of choosing the norms of the homeland to govern the private interests at stake in the Diaspora Bond investment, yet permits
the adopted land's government to regulate the offering to protect the
public interest of the adopted land.
E. Rejecting Nondiaspora Investment. Who Belongs to the Nation?
A final feature of the Resurgent India Bonds is instructive regarding the Indian government's views as to its notion of "nation" and
"diaspora." India restricts the purchase of these instruments to "NonResident Indians," 442 the term commonly employed to refer to the
Indian diaspora. 443 Demonstrating its seriousness about restricting
who can own these instruments, India also restricts their transfer.
Owners of these instruments can only transfer them to other nonresident Indians or, if given as gifts, to Indian residents, or to Indian charities. 44 To banking and securities industry observers, this NonResident Indians-only restriction will seem bizarre: Why reduce the
potential market for an instrument?
441 See Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, in Identity: Community. Culture,
Difference 222, 235 (Jonathan Rutherford ed., 1990) ("The diaspora experience ... is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and
diversity-, by a conception of 'identity' which lives with and through, not despite difference;
by hybridity.") (emphasis in original).
442 State Bank of India, supra note 378, at 5. Under the instruments, a person is deemed
to be of Indian origin if "he/she, at any time, held an Indian Passport, or helshe or either of
his/her parents or any of hislher grandparents were a citizen of India by virtue of the Indian Constitution or the Citizenship Act, 1955." Id.
443 Id. Corporate entities established outside India in which nonresident Indians have
some interest (called "Overseas Corporate Bodies" in the offer document) may also
purchase Resurgent India Bonds, as may banks acting as fiduciaries to nonresident Indians
and such Overseas Corporate Bodies. Id.
444
Id. at 6.
1092
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This section seeks to examine possible explanations for this restriction and begins to evaluate the merits of those explanations. It
does not undertake the important statutory445 analysis of whether
such a restriction is repugnant under existing national origin 446 discrimination law. Indeed, this limitation has already been challenged
in a suit brought before the Southern District of New York 447 by an
individual who claimed that his attempts to purchase Resurgent India
Bonds were rebuffed because he was not of Indian origin. 448
At least two arguments might be offered to explain this restriction as being favorable to India's economic interests. First, it might be
a marketing gimmick to try to attract the Indian diaspora. People will
be more inclined to invest, the story might go, if they think it is a
special privilege only available to them. Thus, the loss of the
nondiasporan investors (who would be few in number given the
nonmarket rate offered on the instruments) would be outweighed by
the greater number of diaspora investors led by vanity to invest. Second, it might be thought that diaspora investors will be more likely to
forbear in times of crisis. They might not require strict adherence to
the redemption terms if the Indian economy were in trouble. They
might be less likely to sue if problems arose.
These empirical claims seem unconvincing. The diaspora might
have been persuaded to support India through the purchase of these
instruments simply by appealing to their desire to help a beleaguered
homeland rather than by some sense of privilege. Furthermore, it
seems unlikely that nondiaspora investors who are willing to accept
the nonmarket rate interest offered by the instruments would be no445 Since the State Bank of India and the other intermediary institutions offering Resurgent India Bonds are not United States state entities, constitutional limitations based in the
Equal Protection Clause likely do not apply.
446 The Supreme Court has defined national origin as "the country where a person was
born, or, more broadly, the country from which his or her ancestors came." Espinoza v.
Farah Mfg. Co., 414 U.S. 86, 88 (1973).
447 Leonard Schoenfeld filed suit in New York state court against Citibank, State Bank
of India, and Bank of India on the ground that the defendants had deprived him "of the
right to purchase and hold property, in violation of the United States Constitution, the
New York State Constitution, and 42 U.S.C. § 1982. Amended Verified Complaint at 7,
Schoenfeld v. Citibank, N.A., No. 115403/98 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. filed Aug. 21, 1998). Upon
petition by the defendants, the state court removed the case to the federal district court in
the Southern District of New York. Schoenfeld v. Citibank, N.A., No. 98 Civ. 6147
(S.D.N.Y. Dec. 29, 1998) (order granting removal from state court).
448 The case was brought as a class action on behalf of all "persons of non-Indian origin
residing in the United States who were denied the opportunity to purchase Resurgent India Bonds." Amended Verified Complaint at 1, Schoenfeld (No. 115403/98). He sought
$387,500,000 in compensatory damages for the class, calculated on the basis of the assumption that the entire issuance of instruments would have been purchased by persons of nonIndian origin; he also sought $100 million in punitive damages. Id. at 7.
October 2001)
DIASPORA BONDS
ticeably more likely to sue than diaspora investors. 449 Instead, the explanation of the restriction can probably be found elsewhere: in the
Indian concept swadeshi.450
Swadeshi, literally meaning "belonging to one's own country," 451
was championed by the liberator Mahatma Gandhi at the beginning of
the twentieth century to try to create demand for indigenous manufacturing and thereby support domestic industry, and the doctrine has
been used as justification for the boycott of all foreign goods, though
Gandhi himself was careful not to fall into the reflexive rejection of all
foreign manufacture. 452 The Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the
Indian government that issued the Resurgent India Bonds, has taken
up, albeit inconsistently, the swadeshi theme for its economic policies. 453 The party interprets the doctrine as promoting "self-reliance"
'454
and "self-respect.
The Resurgent India Bonds appeal to this concept of self-reliance
but force us to reexamine what India views as its "self.' '455 By turning
to nonresident Indians, the "self' upon whom the government relies is
not the citizenry of India, but rather a more encompassing notion of a
people whose parents or grandparents originated in India4.56 The definition of "Non-Resident Indian" tells us much about whom the Indian government views as "Indian." Notably, the definition explicitly
excludes citizens of Bangladesh and Pakistan. Furthermore, the definition requires that one have a parent or grandparent who was a citizen of India, thereby excluding the descendants of the Indian
indentured laborers who were brought to British colonies in the Car449 Indeed, Indian American purchasers of the Indian Development Bonds recently
sued India in United States court for claims arising out of those instruments. Poddar v.
State Bank of India, 79 F. Supp. 2d 391, 393 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (considering defendant State
Bank's motion to dismiss for forum non conveniens and denying it on ground that defendant had agreed to have disputes heard in United States courts).
450 See Shefali Rekhi, NRI Bonds: Resurgence at a Price, India Today, Aug. 31,1998, at
46 (noting connection between swadeshi and Resurgent India Bonds).
451 The Oxford Hindi-English Dictionary 1049 (R.S. McGregor ed., 1993) (defining swadeshi as "of or belonging to one's own country, specif, manufactured in one's own country,
not imported").
452 Mani Shankar Aiyar, Saffron Swadeshi: Does the BJP's Economics Derive from
Gandhi or Golwalkar?, India Today, Apr. 20, 1998, at 29 (quoting Gandhi as saying, "[to
reject foreign manufactures merely because they are foreign and to go on wasting national
time and money to promote manufactures in one's country for which it is not suited %vould
be a criminal folly and a negation of the swadeshi spirit").
453 Durga Ray, How Economists and Businessmen Define Swadeshi, India Abroad,
May 15, 1998, at 6.
454 Id.
455 The
literature on Indian nationalism is vast. A recent essay describes this nationalism's self-conscious construction. Sudipta Kaviraj, Modernity and Politics in India, Daedalus, Winter 2000, at 137, 149, 152-54.
[Vol. 76:1005
ibbean and elsewhere after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. 457 Thus, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Indo-Caribbeans
Indian diaspora, at least as recognized by the
are excluded from the
58
Indian government.
4
If we understand the nonresident-Indian-only restriction as being
based on an expansive conception of the Indian nation, we can link
that restriction to other, more common restrictions on foreign investment into a country. Most, and perhaps all, countries impose special
restrictions on certain categories of foreign investment. The United
States, for example, imposes restrictions on (though not necessarily
outright proscriptions against) foreign ownership in land,4 59 broadcasting companies, 4 60 communications satellites, nuclear facilities,
mining industries, hydroelectric power licenses, and oil, gas, and min461
eral leases.
However, these restrictions, like those limiting who can purchase
Resurgent India Bonds, can hurt the economy more than they help it.
See Lal, supra note 85, at 168.
One sees the definitional issue of "who belongs to our nation?" arising in the Chinese context as well. In 1978, for example, an editorial in an official Chinese newspaper
questioned whether people of Chinese origin who had acquired a foreign nationality could
any longer be considered "overseas Chinese." Bolt, supra note 32, at 474.
459 Mark Shapiro, Note, The Dormant Commerce Clause: A Limit on Alien Land
Laws, 20 Brook. J. Int'l L. 217,223 (1993) ("Today, almost half of the states have laws that,
to varying degrees, restrict the rights of aliens to own real property."). Alien land laws
have a long history in the United States. See, e.g., Oyama v. California, 332 U.S. 633, 640
(1948) (holding that California Alien Land Law deprived petitioners of equal protection of
State's laws); Keith Aoki, No Right to Own?: The Early TWentieth-Century "Alien Land
Laws" as a Prelude to Internment, 40 B.C. L. Rev. 37, 37-38 (1998) (recounting strong
nationalist basis of Alien Land Laws in western United States during 1920s and 1930s);
James Frechter, Note, Alien Landownership in the United States: A Matter of State Control, 14 Brook. J. Int'l L. 147, 147 (1988) ("Fear of foreign investment in the United States
is not a new phenomenon."); James R. Mason, Jr., Note, "Pssst, Hey Buddy, Wanna Buy a
Country?" An Economic and Political Policy Analysis of Federal and State Laws Governing Foreign Ownership of United States Real Estate, 27 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 453, 45455 (1994) (examining policies underlying alien land ownership laws).
460 See David H. Benz, Comment, The Little Network That Could: FCC Restrictions on
Foreign Ownership, 6 Ind. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 239, 247 (1995) (describing FCC regulations restricting foreign ownership); see also Adeno Addis, Who's Afraid of Foreigners?
The Restrictions on Alien Ownership of Electronic Media, 32 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev.
133, 141, 199 (2000) (arguing that foreign-ownership restrictions in Communications Act
are outmoded).
461 John E. Blyth, Disclosure Requirements for Foreign Investors in the United States,
11 Int'l. L. Practicum 53, 54-55 (1998). Historically, foreign investment has been restricted
in merchant shipping, financial institutions, lands and minerals, broadcast communications,
air commerce, and transactions with the government. Detlev F. Vagts, The Corporate
Alien: Definitional Questions in Federal Restraints on Foreign Enterprise, 74 Harv. L.
Rev. 1489, 1497-1523 (1961); see also Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm'n, 334 U.S. 410,
421-22 (1948) (invalidating California law prohibiting "alien Japanese" from obtaining
commercial fishing license).
457
458
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DIASPORA BONDS
Such restrictions violate the neoclassical economic preference for free
allocation of capital. India might be able to reduce the cost of raising
capital by removing such restrictions. 462 Furthermore, debt does not
carry a right of control in the same way that equity ownership does.463
A country that comes to rely on Diaspora Bonds for funding does,
however, bear the risk that its diaspora may refuse to purchase bonds
out of dissatisfaction with that country's government. 464
CONCLUSION
In a world characterized by ever-increasing globalization, not
only of capital and goods but also of people, diasporas seek a link to a
past that is removed not only in time but also in space.465 At times,
this link can manifest itself in an atavistic racialism. Diaspora Bonds,
on the other hand, demonstrate one possibility where this link to the
past may be put in the service of economic development in the present. People sustaining diaspora ties must do so critically, eschewing
moral relativism yet respecting difference.
In accordance with this critical project, we might ask: Why introduce diaspora as another category of individual identity relevant to
the law?
462 Some Indian economists criticized the Indian expatriate-only restriction on this
ground. Krishna Guha, Resurgent Bond Issue to Stay Open, Fin. Times (London), Aug.
18, 1998, at 24 ("Some economists question the wisdom of offering debt to non-resident
Indians only, arguing that an open offer would deliver cheaper funds.").
463 Controlling the identities of the holders of a sovereign bond, however, may be an
important value for the sovereign. Because bonds often require unanimous consent for
certain changes, a "maverick creditor" can pose a grave impediment to, or extract special
concessions in the event of, a debt restructuring. The maverick creditor can take advantage of the indulgence shown by a majority of a sovereign's creditors. As one lawyer colorfully describes, "It is like giving up your seat on a crowded bus to an elderly woman only to
watch a teenager jump on it." Christopher Stoakes, Beware the Maverick Sovereign Creditor, Euromoney, Sept. 1996, at 42 (quoting Lee Buchheit, attorney and international sovereign debt expert).
464 See, e.g., Camlot, supra note 330 ("Israel Bonds encountered political difficulties last
year when several U.S. rabbis canceled their appeals and refused to distribute the [PIO]
cards. They were protesting the Labor government's approach to the peace process.").
46 There is historical contingency in this attitude. First, diasporas depend on transportation and communication technologies that make it possible to divorce territory from nation. Appadurai, supra note 94, at 161. Second, assimilation may prove a compelling
force, and diasporan feelings may dissipate over generations. Third, we may give up national feelings in favor of regional ones, identifying ourselves as pan-Asian, European, or
Latino. Franck, Empowered Self, supra note 28, at 79-80. The Treaty of Maastricht, for
example, declares all citizens of European Union member states to be citizens of the European Union itself. Treaty on European Union, Feb. 7, 1992, art. 8, O. (C 191) 7 (1992).
See generally European Citizenship: An Institutional Challenge (Massimo La Torre ed.,
1998) (examining challenges of new legal status of European citizenship); Cohen, supra
note 221. But for the world at the turn of the millennium, the diaspora model recognizes
the ontological standing of notions of citizen, nation, and state.
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In a globalized world, mutation, hybridity, and intermixture represent the prevailing norm. Thus, the diaspora model, which allows
people to maintain hybridized and hybridizing bonds to homeland and
hostland, better approximates how people now imagine their relationship to the state than either the statist or cosmopolitan models. Moreover, while it rejects the statist demand that all persons pledge fealty
to one state or the cosmopolitan desire that we forswear any primary
fealty to country, the diaspora model is broad enough to accommodate persons who register support only for one state or for no state at
all. Rather than seeking to change people, the diaspora model suggests that we revisit our conception of the international order. By recognizing the possibility of a wide array of allegiances, especially to
homeland and transnational community, the diaspora model promotes
authenticity and allows people to flourish.
Second, the diaspora model offers a view of citizenship that reconciles globalization with the desire for a sense of rootedness. It understands the traveling nature of contemporary culture. 466 The
diaspora approach embraces globalization, but does not mistake it for
a renunciation of nation or state. The diaspora model embraces the
multiculturalism of cosmopolitanism while still respecting the very
thing that animates such multiculturalism-the individual's search for
belonging.
Third, accepting diaspora as a legitimate basis for community affirms a connection between rich and poor nations that can support
economic development. We find exactly this dynamic in the case of
Diaspora Bonds, which enable homeland governments to tap the
wealth of their expatriates to fund economic development in the
homeland. 467 Admittedly, cosmopolitanism offers a distributive justice approach 468 that is more demanding and systematic than the voluntary homeland-regarding actions of the diaspora. However, the
diaspora model is more likely to harness existing forces for economic
development than cosmopolitanism is likely to find the altruistic, en469
lightened persons who embrace its nondiscriminatory principles.
Fourth, recognizing diasporan relationships allows us to better
understand the contemporary world order. It allows us to grasp the
connections between distant events and to place these events into a
broader global framework. Recognizing the diaspora helps locate in466 See James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century
17-46 (1997) (discussing emergence of traveling culture-makers).
468 See supra note 202 and accompanying text.
469 Cf. Nussbaum, supra note 200, at 24 (observing American "indifference to the wellbeing of the whole world").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
dividual events in a broader narrative. 470 Of course, we must still bear
in mind that diasporan events will differ from each other in important
ways.
Finally, the intermingling of the people of the world across states
and nations may reduce interstate violence and human rights abuse.
Diasporas blur the distinction between "us" and "them." It will be
harder to demonize another people when one's own compatriots hail
from that same place and maintain strong bonds to it. Because diasporas muddy the purity of nations, they offer a possible escape from
what Samuel Huntington describes as a post-Cold War "clash of civilizations." 471 While it would be Panglossian to suggest that the diaspora's adopted land will be unlikely to declare war on the diaspora's
home country or vice versa, 472 it may be the case that the diaspora will
help the two countries understand each other better, thereby potentially reducing the likelihood of hostilities. Additionally, should war
in fact break out, it would be more likely targeted at the foreign government, not its people, since its people may well include our neighbors and friends.
But diasporas do not offer all good news. James Clifford worries
that "theories and discourses that diasporize or internationalize 'minorities' can deflect attention from long-standing, structured inequalities of class and race." 473 By diverting attention to one's membership
in a diaspora, the model risks ignoring the crucial features of class and
race.474 In addition, valorizing diaspora might have the effect of
strengthening claims of traditional patriarchal societies over the lives
470 This allows responses to a particular event to be framed in terms of more general
principles. See text accompanying supra note 109.
471 See generally Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
World Order (1996) (discussing how culture and cultural identities shape patterns of conflict and cohesion in post-Cold War order). Stanley Tambiah makes this point, observing
that diasporas may serve as a "corrective formulation" to Huntington's "gothic" vision.
Tambiah, supra note 16, at 189. Tambiah quotes Diana Eck. "Today, the Islamic world is
no longer somewhere else, in some other part of the world; instead Chicago, with its 50
mosques and nearly half a million Muslims, is part of the Islamic world." Id.at 190 (quoting Diana Eck, Neighboring Faiths: How Will Americans Cope with Increasing Religious
Diversity, Harv. Mag., Sept.-Oct. 1996, at 38, 44).
472 Compare the Kantian claim that liberal states do not go to war against other liberal
states. Immanuel Kant, Eternal Peace (1795), reprinted in The Philosophy of Kant:
Immanuel Kant's Moral and Political Writings 430-76 (Carl J. Friedrich ed., 1949); see also
Anne-Marie Burley, Law Among Liberal States: Liberal Internationalism and the Act of
State Doctrine, 92 Colum. L. Rev. 1907, 1914 (1992) ("The 'liberal peace' that Kant predicted has in fact been established. Liberal states do not war with one another.").
473 Clifford, supra note 6, at 313.
474 For example, Frank Wu worries that a person's identification with the Chinese diaspora may inhibit her participation in "coalition movements with other Asian Americans or
anyone else for that matter." Frank H. Wu, Chinese Destinations, 9 Asian Am. Pol'y Rev.
124, 127 (2000) (book review).
1098
[Vol. 76:1005
of diaspora women. 475 As Clifford notes, "[c]ommunity can be a site
' '47 6
both of support and oppression.
The diaspora model does not suggest that diasporas are good per
se; rather it allows that diasporas can be good because they may en-
hance our quest for authenticity in a world where economics and violence-not desire-may dictate where we live, and because they can
be a source for the economic capital and information necessary for
economic development.
There are other risks. Strengthened ties between diasporas and
homelands can also fuel irredentist campaigns. 477 Before World War
II, for example, Germany sought to stir up German nationalism in its
neighboring states.478 In addition, Clifford observes that "feelings of
diasporan identity can encourage antagonism, a sense of superiority to
other minorities and migrant populations. ' 479 Finally, any notion of
diaspora should not serve to enshrine a monolithic view of the culture
or values of that diaspora, protecting it against challenge and
change. 48 0 The diaspora model seeks to find the point of balance between erasing culture and history altogether and essentializing culture
and history in rigid stereotypes.
At times hope-and at other times fear-compels many people
to leave their homeland and settle abroad. But leaving home does not
necessarily eliminate one's regard for that land or its people. The nation-state system imposes a physicality on individuals that does not
475 Gayatri Gopinath, "Bombay, U.K., Yuba City": Bhangra Music and the Engendering of Diaspora, 4 Diaspora 303, 306, 310-11 (1995) (exploring reinforcement of patrilineal
and male-centered narrative in diasporan popular music).
476 Clifford, supra note 6, at 314 (emphasis omitted).
477 "Irredentism entails the retrieval of ethnically kindred people and their territory
across an international boundary, joining them and it to the retrieving state." Donald L.
Horowitz, Self-Determination: Politics, Philosophy, and Law, 39 Nomos 421, 423 (1997).
See generally Donald L. Horowitz, Irredentas and Secessions: Adjacent Phenomena, Neglected Connections, in Irredentism and International Politics 9 (Naomi Chazan ed., 1991)
(comparing and contrasting irredentas and secessions). It should be noted, however, that
irredentist claims have received "very little" international support. Kingsbury, supra note
109, at 487.
478 Shalom Reichman & Arnon Golan, Irredentism and Boundary Adjustments in PostWorld War I Europe, in Irredentism and International Politics, supra note 477, at 51, 52-57
(describing German irredentist movement in Poland).
479 Clifford, supra note 6, at 315. It should be noted, however, that all exclusionary
rhetoric, including that of state citizenship, shares these same negative possibilities. The
cosmopolitans offer this critique of the statist conception of citizenship.
480 Hall, supra note 441, at 226 (stating that "cultural identity is not a fixed essence at
all, lying unchanged outside history and culture .... Of course, it is not a mere phantasm
either"); Sunder, supra note 11, at 90 (observing how cultural protectionist approach to
culture and diaspora "tends to prefer an orthodox view of culture over a progressive one,
and may become a tool for conservatives or those in power to suppress dissenting voices
within a culture").
October 2001]
DIASPORA BONDS
1099
correspond precisely to their emotional attachments. Whether by
choice or not, we live in one country, even though our hearts might
belong to two.481 In some sense then, this Article has been an effort
to grapple with the existential question Salman Rushdie finds himself
asking as a writer of the Indian diaspora: "How are we to live in this
world?"482
481
The Irish poet Paul Durcan offers this lament:
Yet I have no choice but to leave, to leave,
And yet there is nowhere I more yearn to live
Than in my own wild countryside,
Backside to the wind.
Paul Durcan, Sam's Cross 16 (1978).
482 Rushdie, supra note 227 at 18.

Diaspora Bonds - NYU Law Review

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